


The Traveler

by mosylu



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Mosylu Researches Her Nerdy Little Heart Out, Period-Typical Chapter Headings, Period-Typical Tragedy, Pilgrim Days, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-10-16
Packaged: 2019-07-04 10:42:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 38,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15839595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosylu/pseuds/mosylu
Summary: A regular breach somehow goes awry and Cisco gets knocked back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. With no way to contact the 21st century, Cisco has to muddle through life in 1672 with a hostess that bears a remarkable similarity to Caitlin, and a growing fear that he might never find his way home.





	1. In Which Cisco Does Caitlin a Favor, Hears a Tale of Witchcraft, and Discovers a New and Dismaying Facet of His Breaching Powers

**Author's Note:**

> Yes! It is finally here, the time-traveler AU that started out as a story for Killervibe week back in June and just . . . kept growing. The actual Killervibe is going to be something of a slow burn, not least because they spend a good chunk of the story in two different centuries, but I promise we'll get there in the end. Thanks as always to Hedgi for listening to me yell about this.

Caitlin missed her plane to Boston because there was classic Central City-style mayhem going down. "Oh no," she moaned after it was all over, staring at the time (late. Very late). "It's halfway there already."

"You really want to see this history lecture?" Cisco asked, risking death by pepperoni inhalation as he yawned and tried to chew celebratory pizza at the same time. "You?"

"I minored in history," she said. "And it's not just a lecture, it's a presentation on the diary of an ancestor of mine, at Harvard. And the professor invited me as a special guest." She chewed her lip. "Maybe I could rebook a very early flight."

Cisco leaned over to grab a cup of ranch. "Knock it off with that. You can take Ramon Airways."

She paused with her own slice of pizza halfway to her mouth. "You want to breach me there?"

"Sure. I've never been to Boston."

"It's actually in Cambridge."

"Well, same. Bare, Iris, you can spare us tomorrow, right?"

"Of course we can," Iris said. "Take the time."

Which was how Caitlin found herself walking through Cambridge, Massachusetts about half an hour after Cisco knocked on her front door the next morning. "Thanks so much," she said. "You didn't have to do this."

He shrugged, toying with his phone. "You really wanted to come to this lecture, and like I said, I've never been out this way."

"Would you like to come with me? To the lecture?"

His face crunched up. "Oh, well, wow, that's . . . that's nice of you to offer - "

She rolled her eyes at him. "Or you could just go off on your own for the day."

"Well, sure, I could do that too." He grinned at her. "I figure you'll tell me if she had a sizzling affair with George Washington or something."

"She would have been over a hundred years old when George Washington was a young man."

"Okay, Ben Franklin, then. He was into cougars, right?"

She wrinkled her nose at him. "So what are you going to do?"

"Explore? See what there is to see? Maybe I'll check out some of the comic-book shops in the boonies. Just text me when you're done and we'll go get authentic clam chowder."

"It's a date!" she said brightly, and felt herself blush to the hairline.

Cisco, checking something on his phone, either didn't notice or pretended he didn't. "Oh nice, here's one. Witchfield Comics and Collectibles."

She peered over his shoulder. "It's kind of out there. Is that even still the metro area?"

He waggled his fingers. "Not a problem for Vibe." He put his sunglasses on, grinning at her. "Later."

* * *

Witchfield Comics and Collectibles turned out to be the very best kind of nerd store - clean, well-organized, a variety of fandoms, and staff who weren't supercilious jerks. It was all housed in a creaky old saltbox colonial style house, built circa 1750. He could almost feel the ghosts drifting through.

Cisco spent most of the morning there, exploring all its nooks and crannies, reading the comics, chatting with the staff, and generally buying so many new toys that the cashier, whose nametag read Devon, offered to ship it all home.

He started to wave off the offer, then looked at the bags and thought of juggling them through two breaches. His luck, he'd drop a rare-edition Funko Pop into the void. "Yeah, actually maybe you should."

"Central City," Devon read from the shipping label he filled out. "You're a long way from home."

He flashed a grin. "Just playing tourist. So, Witchfield? Were there really witches here?"

Devon shrugged. "It's New England, man. Lousy with 'em if you listen to the stories."

"Any good local ones?"

"Well . . . I did hear there were a couple of witches right in this area, back in Pilgrim days."

Grinning with anticipation, Cisco leaned on the counter. "Go on."

Devon mimicked his posture, lowering his voice spookily. If it had been darker, he probably would have put a flashlight under his chin. "So, they were just regular pillars of the community until they got caught performing dark rituals by a local girl. Of course, they cursed her, and she died raving and puking her guts out."

Cisco shuddered. "Yikes. So good witches they weren't."

"Hell, no. They got convicted, but before the settlers could hang them - "

He held up his hand. "I thought they burned witches."

"Nah, nah, not here. We hang our witches in Massachusetts."

"But you didn't hang these ones."

The other man's eyes sparkled. "They escaped."

"How?"

"That's the best part. They say that on the gallows itself, they tore open a door to Hell."

"Whaaaaat," Cisco said, laughing. "That's amazing."

"Uh-huh. And they cursed everyone in the settlement on their way down."

"What kind of curse?"

"Hard to say."  Devon waggled his brows. "But King Philip's War came through and destroyed the settlement three years later, so."

"You're blaming a Native American uprising on a witch's curse?"

"Hey, just telling you the story. Now, the survivors fled for Boston, and the ashes of the town cooled for fifty years, until people decided to risk the witch's curse again."

"And has it come back?"

"Not that I know of." He narrowed his eyes and dropped his voice. "But you never know what's going to piss off a witch."

Cisco laughed. "That's an awesome story."

"Thanks." Devon ran a hand through his hair. "Hey, if you're going to be in the area for a few days, I could probably pull out some more. The store closes in an hour."

For a  moment, he was tempted. Devon was pretty cute. Nerdy, too. And it had been four months since he'd broken up with Cynthia.

But Caitlin was waiting for him. They were going to have clam chowder together.

He shook his head with a regretful smile. "Sorry, I'm leaving tonight. But thanks. I'm flattered."

Devon took it with equanimity. "Well, if you're ever back in town, stop in and say hi. I'm co-owner, I'm not going anywhere."

Cisco gathered up his receipt and tucked it in his wallet. "I'll keep that in mind. You got a great shop here. Nice meeting you, Devon."

He swung out the door and headed around the side of the building. A tiny, tree-sprinkled park separated the shop from the next store over. He cut through it, well back from the road, lost in the trees. Skirting around a hip-high boulder, he judged the area sufficiently secluded. Casually, he flicked out his hand and pulled open a breach.

He was already on his way through when the _wrongness_ hit him.

The familiar swirl of the breach was all out of sync. It jangled in his ears and scraped along his skin, and the other end looked further away somehow, the void bigger and deeper. He let out a choked cry and tried to turn around, but the breach slammed closed around him, and he fell into the dark.

* * *

Cisco groaned as he came back to consciousness. "Ow. What happened?"

"Lie still," Caitlin said in her bossiest voice. "You took a fall."

Took a fall? That was a weird way of putting it. "I was breaching," he muttered. "Something went wrong - " He pried his eyes open and saw, not Caitlin's familiar med lab, but a dark room, close room with a -

He had to look again to be sure he wasn't seeing things. No fooling, that was a thatched roof overhead, with rafters. "Where are we?"

He tried to sit up and her hand landed on his shoulder, nudging him back.

"Lie _still,_ I said."

He looked over at her and blinked again. She’d changed out of the silky blouse and soft cardigan she’d worn earlier, and was now in a long, dull green dress and a smudged apron, with a close-fitting cap over her hair. "What’s with the colonial Williamsburg getup?" Please tell him she hadn't decided to cosplay that history lecture of hers.

She gave him a look. "Where?" She put her hand to his forehead. "You're not fevered. Does your head hurt?"

"Only like a nail after getting hit with a hammer," he said.

She frowned at him. "Babbling."

"I mean, yes. Hurts plenty, thanks for asking."

She pushed herself up from the chair and went across the room to crouch next to the fireplace, stirring the contents of a pot hanging over a fire. Not only was she cosplaying, she was actually LARPing now?

"Caitlin," he said to her back. "What - "

She went rigid. "How do you know my name?"

He shook his head and regretted it almost immediately. "We've known each other for seven years, what do you mean how do I know your name?"

She reached out and grabbed a knife as long as his forearm, and turned, pointing it at him. "We are strangers to each other, and the first I laid eyes on you was this morning, in a field a mile away. Now tell me, sir, _how do you know my name?"_

He lifted his hands and scooted back against the pillows, trying to make himself as non threatening as possible. "Whoa," he said softly. "Whoa."

She waved the knife a little for emphasis, not that emphasis was needed. "Tell me now!"

What was going on? Why was one of his closest friends acting like they'd never met?

Then he spotted something.

Caitlin had worn braces throughout middle school. He'd seen the pictures; they were extremely cute. Now, her teeth were as straight and even as a picket fence.

But the woman in front of him had crooked front teeth.

She wasn't actually Caitlin. Or at least, not _his_ Caitlin.

Automatically, he checked the frequency of his surroundings. They were on Earth-1, everything as it should be. But this didn't look like any place on Earth-1 he'd ever seen outside of a period piece, and Caitlin's doppelganger stood in front of him with fear and suspicion in her eyes.

So what was going on?

"I think we'd both better calm down," he said. "Maybe put down any sharp implements we're holding . . . "

Her fingers tightened around the knife.

"Or not, that's a valid choice, and I respect it," he said. "Why don't we introduce ourselves here? I'll go first. Hi. I'm Cisco Ramon and I mean you no harm."

"Cisco," she said. "What manner of name is that? Are you a foreigner?"

"Hey, miss me with that," he said. "I was born in the United States."

"Where is that?"

Oh shit. No way.

"Uh," he said. "Maybe we can get into that later. But for now - who are you and where are we?"

"I am Kathleen Snow," she said. "As you seem to know already."

"Kathleen," he repeated, noting how the -th- was a little harder and the -ee- a little crisper in her accent. "Okay. And, Kathleen, where are we again?"

"Just outside the settlement of Middleton, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. And cease making free with my Christian name," she snapped. "You may call me Goodwife Snow."

"Goodwife," he said slowly. "Massachusetts Bay Colony. Okay. Right. Like I said, I'm feeling a little addled right now. Can you tell me the date, please?"

"The seventh of April."

"And . . . the year?"

"'Tis the year of our Lord 1672, of course."

* * *

He convinced her that he was no harm by telling her the truth. Some of the truth, anyway. A smidge of it.

"I'm from a far land," he said. "I was traveling and I don't know what happened, really, but I'm so glad you found me." Knocked out in a field. Jeezum crow. He probably would have gotten eaten by a bear or something. They still had bears in Massachusetts in 1672, right?

He was in the fricking _seventeenth century._

How had that happened? He'd just meant to breach back to the Harvard campus in Cambridge, where Caitlin should be about done with her lecture. He was supposed to be eating clam chowder in a tourist trap right now and discussing whether to jump right back to Central City or check out more of Boston with their day off.

But then something had gone wrong with his breach and dumped him here, lying flat on his back in a colonial hut with a very freaked-out woman.

Who looked basically exactly like Caitlin.

"You know my name," said the freaked-out woman, looking even more freaked out.

"No, see, that was my confusion talking. I was traveling with a good friend - who happens to look a lot like you - and we got separated. And in my confusion, right, what with passing out in the field and whatnot, I thought you were her."

"But - my name."

"Her name is Caitlin. See? Close."

"Caitlin," she repeated. "I have never heard it said so."

Yeah, it was one of those modern kind of names, wasn't it? He shrugged and smiled brightly at her. "It's common where I'm from."

He pushed himself up in the bed and grimaced as his head throbbed, hard. "Ouch," he muttered. "Did I hit my head?"

Just like Caitlin would have, she got immediately distracted by a medical need. "You shed no blood, but there is a mighty knot on the back of your head," she reported, ladling something from the cauldron into a thick mug and bringing it to him.

"Yeah, there it is," he said, running his hand over the back of his head and wincing. "What is this?" he asked, taking the mug.

"Willow-bark tea," she said. "'Twill ease the pain."

"Twill it?" he said, but remembered that aspirin was made out of willow bark. Maybe. Or maybe he was thinking of quinine. He sniffed the tea and took a cautious sip. Well, it was gross enough to be medicinal, for sure.

"Drink all of it," she said.

Conditioned by years of feeling better after obeying Caitlin decrees, he followed orders.

When he finished it, Kathleen had walked out of the room. He looked around for a bedside table or something to put the mug, but there was nothing except the hearth and a chest, way at the bottom of the bed. Damn. They didn't go in for knickknacks in Puritan-land, did they?

He kicked the blankets aside and stood up, grunting as his head throbbed again. But it was already softer than it had been. Willow bark did the job, apparently.

When the pain had faded, he noticed a certain draftiness and looked down at himself. "Oh, shit," he mumbled.

The shirt was straight out of a romance-novel cover. Some white woven cloth falling nearly to his knees, with loose sleeves gathered at the wrist and a v-neck open to mid-chest. And it was the only stitch of clothing he had on.

"You shouldn't be out of bed," Kathleen said, coming back in with a bucket of water.

He set the mug down on the chest and scooted back to bed as quickly as possible, tugging the blankets over himself. The length of the shirt meant his junk was reasonably covered up, but the lack of pants still freaked him out. "Uh. Where are my clothes and how did they get off my body?"

She pointed. "Over there."

He looked and saw a heap of mud-smeared, grass-stained 21st century clothing in a basket. That was his, all right - the jeans and the lightning-bolt shirt and his shoes and socks and - oh damn, yep - even his boxers. "I had some other things - "

"I have put them in the chest. Your clothing is most queer, sir."

"Excuse you?"

She looked surprised. "I meant no offense. I have not seen its like, is all. You must come from very far away."

Right. Once upon a time, queer just meant odd. Old-timey lingo was definitely different.

"And as for who undressed you, I did," she said calmly, adding water to the cauldron.

He felt his face heat. "You?"

She reached for a bag sitting on the hearth, opened it, and added something that looked like wood shavings. "I am a widow and a midwife. A man's body is not unknown to me."

He cleared his throat. "So, you don't have a handyman or someone who brought me here?"

"No," she said. "I live alone. I put you on the travois and dragged you in."

"For a mile?"

"Tis no distance at all."

He wasn't Andre the Giant, but he wasn't a featherweight either. But when she reached out and picked up a second cauldron as big as her head and hooked it over the fire without so much as a grunt, he decided she'd probably handled his unconscious ass without any problems.

"So, uh, how long will it take before my clothes are all clean?"

She pursed her lips, now adding water to the cauldron and stirring its contents. "I can wash them tomorrow."

"Hey, come on, I've got to - " Get back to the 21st century. "Uh, to meet my friend. Can't you throw them in tonight?"

"Throw them in where?"

Right, right, no washing machines. "I mean, can't you just give 'em a dunk and wring them out? Or I could do it."

Her brows drew together and her lips went thin. "Your head still aches. I can tell by your eyes. I apologize if my home is not up to your standards of luxury, that you feel the need to take on woman's work to escape."

Oh my god, _what?_ "It's not that," he said. Damn. Apparently all Caitlins/Kathleens in all time periods got starchy and impossible when they felt insulted. "Your home is fine. Nice, even! I just really would like to get going on my way. Meet up with my friend again. And I'm sure you'd like me out of your hair."

"Your traveling companions will either come seeking you or they will await you in Middleton. Either way, it will do no harm to stay until you're well enough to travel. Head wounds are nothing to trifle with." She stalked out of the room.

With a huff, he climbed out of the bed and grabbed his clothes. He'd put them back on in the 21st century. He was out.

He pictured the street where he'd left Caitlin. Lots of old, stuffy-looking buildings, brick sidewalks, a few cars buzzing through. He might get some looks but he could tough it out, as long as he was back where he belonged.

He stretched out his hand. He had to try twice, the breach twisting out of his grasp, but finally he pulled it open, the familiar purply light illuminating the inside of Kathleen's tiny house. For a moment, relief washed through him. It was a regular breach, smooth and swirling, none of the wrongness that had knocked him back in time.

But then he looked through it.

A dude right out of Pilgrim play - black hat, buckled shoes, the whole nine - gaped back at him. Behind him, Cisco could see a couple of wooden buildings and a field of mud, definitely _not_ Harvard University of 2018.

With a gasp, he let the breach go, dropping all his clothes and staggering backward to collapse onto the bed. His head felt like someone had stabbed it with a knife, and the shakes rattled his body. With a groan, he rested his head on the pillow.


	2. In Which Cisco Displays Somewhat Less Than His Accustomed Sartorial Savoir Faire and Closely Avoids Meeting Unfriendly Neighbors

"Okay," Cisco muttered to the thatched roof overhead. His head pounded like a hammer. "Oooookayyy. I can figure this out." 

First off, breaching had been a bad choice. That much was clear. Maybe because of hitting his head, or the aftereffects of time-jumping instead of space-jumping. Whatever reason, he felt way worse now.

Second, apparently breaching back to 2018 wasn't going to be as easy as his return trips normally were. It looked like his breach had opened up in the spatial location where he wanted to be, but not the temporal one.

If only he knew how he'd done it in the first place. 

Ugh, his head hurt.

He just had to rest up. Take a day, then go to where Cait -  _ Kathleen _ \- had found him, and maybe try from there. Yeah. Maybe the field where she'd found him was some kind of breach-screwing vortex or something.

"What did you do?"

He opened his eyes again to see Kathleen in the doorway, hands on her hips. "Um," he said.

"You were trying to get up," she grumbled, grabbing the clothes he'd dropped and swatting them back into the basket. "Regretted that, didn't you?"

"So much," he said humbly. "So, so much. You were right and I was wrong and I'll stay put now."

Her shoulders softened. "I don't blame you for wanting to find your friend," she said, straightening up. "Are there others in your party or were you two traveling alone?"

"It was just us two, but Caitlin can take care of herself. I'm not worried about her." She would worry, but she'd be okay. And she would be fascinated when he told her he'd gone back in time.

Kathleen shook her head. "A woman traveling alone always has cause to worry. If you like, I can walk into Middleton and ask after her. She would be relieved to know you yet live."

"You don't have to do that," he said. "She won't be in Middleton."

Her eyes narrowed. "Where is she, then? Do you even know?" 

Third degree much? His laissez-faire attitude toward Caitlin didn't seem to sit well with her. But if she wasn't going to kick him out of her house, he had to keep her happy.

"She's in Cambridge. We were visiting Harvard." Oh, snap, had Harvard even been invented in 1672?

She blinked. "The minister's college? Are you a minister?"

"What, not even." He cleared his throat, belatedly catching the tone of extra respect when she'd mentioned men of God. "But we were . . . visiting some. Our friends. Who are ministers. Very respectable types, salt of the earth. She's staying with them. Don't worry, Caitlin's safe as houses."

Her eyebrows looked skeptical. Maybe the gentleman doth protest too much. He asked humbly, "Don't 'spose there's any more willow bark tea?"

* * *

Getting bashed on the head, hurled through time, and then failing to hurl himself back took more out of Cisco than he realized. After he ate the thick, gamy-tasting stew she ladled out for dinner, he fell asleep again almost right away. 

He woke up irregularly throughout the evening and the night. Owls hooted, animals shrieked, the fire crackled, the wind whistled.

For a place with no traffic or electricity, the past was  _ loud. _

It was also disorienting to have no way to check the time when he woke up. There was no clock, no tablet, and his phone wasn't in the pile of his clothes. Not that there was any cell tower to get the correct time from. He spent some time wondering whether he was going to find it in that field, maybe rained on, maybe eaten by animals.

That would be one hell of a call to his service provider when he got back.  _ Does time travel void the warranty? _

He should be panicking about that, he supposed. What if someone found it and altered the course of history? But the battery had been close to dead. By this time, it would just be a strange glass-and-metal box with odd writing etched into the back.

It was hard to worry about that right now. 

Kathleen had pulled a lumpy pile of something, covered with a blanket, in front of the fire and slept on it, under another blanket. He realized as he tried to roll over quietly that this was probably her only bed, and he'd kicked her out of it.

If he'd thought he had any chance at all of convincing her, he would have woken her up and offered to switch places. But he could just imagine Caitlin's reaction to him sleeping on the ground in front of a fire when he was under her care. Certain things seemed to run in the family.

Because she had to be Caitlin's great-great-whatever grandmother. The resemblance was clear as a bell.  Maybe the same one who'd written the diary that had summoned Caitlin to Harvard. 

He wondered about Caitlin, far away in the future, not too distant in space. Was the diary changing as he lay here? Was he changing the future? Would he jump back to a future that he wouldn't recognize, like Barry coming back from Flashpoint?

That all felt too big to think about.

He'd be better tomorrow, he promised himself. He'd ask Kathleen to take him to the field and then he'd hopefully be able to jump back, and it would all be fine. She would have her bed back and she'd write a diary with a passing mention of a weird dude that had spent the night in her house. 

And Caitlin's life wouldn't be fucked up beyond all recognition.

* * *

In the morning, Kathleen permitted him to get out of bed after he swore up and down that he wasn’t sleepy, his head didn’t hurt (much), and he actually felt completely awesome.

"You are a fine, hearty fellow, it seems," she said, eying him. "I know few men who could be on their feet after the blow you took."

_The stories I could tell_ , he thought. “And hey, could I maybe get my pants back?”

“Your clothes are soaking. I shall wash them this afternoon,” she said. “In the meantime, you can use these.” She rummaged in the chest and handed him some clothes, then took off on some errand of her own to the other room.

She always seemed to be in motion, from the moment he'd woken up. Didn't pilgrims ever get to hang out and chill for like ten minutes? Read the Bible or something?

Probably not. All that Puritan work ethic.

He spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out the clothes. They shouldn't be that weird. Pants, shirt, coat, socks. But the pants were more like baggy button-fly shorts, the shirt still fell to his knees, and the socks were thigh-highs.

When Kathleen walked back in, she took one look at him and busted out laughing.

"Thanks," he said. "Thanks very much. So nice." But he probably would have laughed at himself. Socks sagging to his ankles, pants swishing around his knees, shirt flopping over all of it. He probably looked like a 17th century loon.

"One would think you had never dressed yourself," she said.

"I've dressed myself!" he said. "Just not in clothes like these."

"I see that. Dress is clearly very different where you come from." 

"Uh-huh," he said, a beat too late. "Yeah. Way different."

"Hmmm." 

He cleared his throat. "So? A little help here? I'm not even sure where I went wrong."

She smiled at him. "Tis easy enough." She crouched to tug the socks up over his knees, grabbing a couple of random ribbons that he'd thought were mixed in by mistake. "How do you expect these to stay up without garters?" 

Elastic, he thought. No elastic here, though.

She wrapped them around the tops of the socks and tied them firmly just behind his knee, then tugged the pants straight and used the ties at the hem to tie them below his knee. Oh, so that was what those were all about. 

He already looked a hundred percent better.

When she gathered up the loose material of his shirt and reached for his fly, he stepped back. "Whoa! Whoa. Okay. I think I got that. That gets tucked in? All of it?"

"Of course."

"Right." He turned away, unbuttoning the pants and stuffing all that loose material down into them. That kind of explained why the pants were so baggy, and it certainly helped him with the nagging feeling he was going commando in someone else's clothes, because another thing that hadn't been included was Ye Olde Boxers.

He turned back around. "Like that?"

"Aye," she said, and held out the blue coat for him to shrug into. "Much improved," she said. 

He realized he was looking down at her. That was a weird, new feeling. Caitlin was an inch or so taller than he was, and more with her ever-present high heels. But Kathleen had to tip her chin up slightly to meet his eyes.

People in the past were shorter, that was right. Better nutrition and less back-breaking work and fewer childhood illnesses and all those things had made twenty-first century types taller. 

She was still looking at the coat. Something about her mouth looked a little sad. 

He tried to do up the buttons, and failed. "Sorry," he said. "Little tight."

She tugged the material straight but didn't try buttoning it. "You're broader through the shoulders than my husband was." She looped a reddish-brown neckerchief around his neck and tied it loosely. "There."

"These were his?"

She nodded.

Of course these were his. Like she would have some random set of men's clothes in her chest, waiting for some random man to show up and put them on? "How did he die? If you, uh. Feel like saying."

Her eyes dropped. She turned away and pulled the blankets off the bed, shaking them out before spreading them over the mattress again. "Last winter was a bad one," she said. "He took a chill."

Cisco waited for her to add something about pneumonia, bronchitis, a heart problem, the kind of thing people said when the story started with a chill and ended with a casket. When she didn't go on, he blurted, "That's it? Your husband died from a cold?"

Her face closed off, and he knew he'd fucked up. "I did all I could."

"I'm sorry!" he said. "I wasn't saying you didn't. I know you must have. It's just that, most people don't die of a cold where I come from." 

"You are most fortunate."

"Your husband," he said. "What was he like? Was he nice?" 

"We grew up together," she said. "We wed and came to the New World together. And now he is gone." She gave him a tight smile and turned on her heel to walk out of the room.

Clearly, a  _ lot _ of things ran in the family.

* * *

Kathleen left the house with a big straw hat and a basket over one arm. "I went to the field to gather herbs yesterday," she said. "If I do not do it soon, certain of them will flower and their effectiveness diminish." 

"I'll come with you," he said. He needed to see where he'd landed, to see what was different. If anything was different.

No, it had to be. Something had happened to throw him back in time.

"No," she said, in a voice that admitted no argument. "Tis too long a walk in the sun. Stay here. Drink more willow-bark tea. You have a headache again, I see it in your eyes."

He opened his mouth, shut it again. Dammit. She was right. "Can I at least do something around here? You’ve been hard at work all morning, and I’ve been hanging around trying to figure out clothes. Surely you've got some kind of chore I can handle while you’re gone.”

He usually wasn't so eager for work, but he still felt guilty about bringing up her dead husband (if his name had been Ronald, that was it, Cisco was officially  _ done  _ with time parallels). Not to mention, he knew himself. He knew he needed something to do, and without the Internet, a TV or a police scanner to half-watch, or a machine to take apart, he was going to be climbing the walls.

“I’ve already gathered the eggs, milked the cow, watered the garden, gotten luncheon started, and cleaned the house.”

He goggled slightly. It couldn’t even be nine o’clock in the morning yet. He thought his Caitlin was a hard worker, but she'd finished all that and was heading out for more.  “Anything,” he said. “There’s got to be something.”

“You can weed the garden,” she said. “If you know the difference between a weed and a vegetable.”

He looked at the garden. Nope. Everything just looked . . . green. “Not so much,” he said. "Could I chop firewood?"

She glanced at something in the corner. "Hefting that axe will be a mighty strain on you."

An  _ axe? _ Well, duh, what was he supposed to chop firewood with, a hand grenade? Since it looked wickedly sharp, he said, "I guess not."

“Can you fish? There is a pole in the house and you can find worms in the garden to bait the hook.”

Worms? Nasty. "I swear I'm very helpful," he said. "You got anything I can fix? I'm great at fixing things." Although without his welder and all his tools, and considering most of everything was wood, he wasn't sure if he could back that claim up.

She pursed her lips at him. He didn't think he was impressing her with his incredible utility. “To wash your clothes, I’ll need water,” she said. “Can you bring me water from the stream? Enough to fill that great barrel there.” She pointed at a half-barrel sitting in a corner of the garden. 

“Yes! All right. I can handle that. Water, stream, barrel. Got it.”

“Don't strain yourself,” she warned. “Lay down again if your head begins to hurt too badly. I’ll be back shortly.” She headed off, and he watched her go, noting the direction. If worse came to worst, he could grab his soggy clothes and take off thataway.

Hauling water, with the wooden bucket he found in the house, turned out to be harder than he expected. The stream wasn't too far, but when he'd filled it, the bucket was surprisingly heavy, and the rope handle sawed at his fingers. 

“When I get back to the twenty-first century, I gotta hit the gym again,” he grunted, setting the bucket down on the short walk between the stream and the house. It was his fourth trip. If he hadn't checked it thoroughly, he would think the big barrel she'd pointed out had a leak in it. But no, it was just that big and the bucket was that small.

His shoulders burned, his fingers throbbed, and his socks were soaking wet from how often water had slopped over the sides. "Also, I'm never going to bitch about my water bill ever again."

He wiggled his sore fingers, rolled his shoulders, and caught his breath. Tilting his head back, he stared at the sky.

No airplanes. No telephone poles, no electricity wires. No distant sound of traffic. It was funny how you could ignore those things your entire life and then when they were gone, they were  _ so _ gone.

Fear curled high up in his stomach. Like he might never seen airplanes or telephone poles or electrical wires ever again.

_Stop_ , he told himself firmly, leaning down for the bucket again. _You'll get home. It'll be fine._

As he approached the house from the back, voices from the inside made him stop short. 

"Nobody answered our knock," said a male voice.

Kathleen answered, indignant. "And thus you judged it fitting to walk into my home?"

A third voice, "Have a care. Widow Snow." The words sounded like they should be growled in a silky, posh accent. But the voice was reedy, crackling a little like a smoker's. "Your tongue grows shrewish."

Cisco let out a soundless whistle and waited for Kathleen to rip him a new one.

After three seconds of silence, she said, "I beg your pardon, Reverend."

His mouth fell open.

But Kathleen wasn't Caitlin, and this wasn't 2018, and if he recalled his high-school unit on The Crucible correctly, the local Reverend wasn't somebody you could really afford to piss off.

Then she continued, "Surely 'twas the surprise of your visit that caused me to forget myself. To what do I owe the honor?"

He grinned broadly, setting the bucket down. Maybe she couldn't openly cut the Reverend off at the knees, but if she was anything like her descendant, the edge in her voice told him she wanted to.

Because seriously, who just walked into someone's house? Even in olden days?

He scooted toward the window, wondering if he could see in without any of them spotting him. What if they did? _Hey there, I'm Kathleen's cousin from out of town?_ Way out of town. And the cousin thing might not fly that well either in Ye Olde Whyte-as-Fucke New England.

"We were concerned for your safety," said the first voice. It was younger than the Reverend's, with a little of the same reediness. "The Wilkins girl came to us last eve with a grave tale."

"Oh?"

"She was in the field a mile hence and saw something most fearsome. A ring of white fire opened in the very air, gaping to show the maw of Hell."

Cisco's toes curled, his stomach twisted, his scalp prickled. Somebody had seen the breach. His breach.

"Lord preserve us," Kathleen said. "Did she see aught else?"

"A demon," the Reverend said. "A swarthy fellow in outlandish garments. A demon ejected from Hell, come to spread evil in our new holy land."

He flattened himself against the side of the house, his breath coming fast. Someone had not just seen the breach, they'd seen him. And mistaken him for a demon. 

His heart beat in his throat. Maybe he should take off for the field right now. Try to get home. Deal with the fact of leaving his clothes and his phone and his wallet in the 17th century, because if they thought he was a demon, they were unlikely to invite him to the local pub for a beer.

Then Kathleen said, "Forgive me, but are you certain of this tale? It sounds like a dream. Mayhaps she fell asleep in the field."

"She trembled as she spoke, and swore before God that her tale was true."

"It is most concerning in that case," she said. "I thank you for your warning."

"Not just a warning, Widow Snow," the younger man said. "You are closest to that field, and go there often, I think."

"To gather herbs, yes. I will take care."

"Did you go there yesterday?"

Cisco's hands clenched at his sides. Accusation slithered through the younger man's words like the snake through the garden of Eden.

Kathleen answered calmly. "I gathered no herbs yesterday. I went this morning, as you see. I was just returning from that errand when I met with you at my front door."

"Have you seen anything of this creature?"

"I have seen no demon. You may rest assured I shall tell you if I do."

Silence, then, one that drew Cisco's scalp tight and knotted his fists. They were not good guys, the Reverend and the younger man. And Kathleen was up against them all by herself. He shifted his weight -

And if he went charging in there, they'd take one look at him, a "swarthy" stranger walking into Kathleen's house like he belonged there - and then all hell would break loose.

"See that you do, Widow Snow," the reverend said finally. Every time he said "widow," there was a sneer in his voice. "As long as this creature is on the loose, our immortal souls are at risk."

"Of course I shall inform you," she said, a little too sweetly. "Just as your son will, I am sure."

"What?" the younger man said.

"I think you go to that field yourself," she said. "Or perhaps I am mistaken?"

Another long, stretched out silence. "You are mistaken," the younger voice said.

"Ah," she said. "My apologies. Reverend Miller, Goodman Miller, permit me to bid you good day."

The door creaked, and Cisco took a step along the wall, scooting further away from the front of the house. His heart pounded in his ears. This had been a dumb hiding place, but he'd wanted to hear - 

Two men stepped out in the same kind of outfit he himself wore, but less worn and in finer materials. The shorter, older one stalked down the path, looking furious. The younger one followed, saying, "Father - "

"Not here, Josiah," the reverend said through gritted teeth, and his son went silent. They disappeared around the bend.

The door creaked again, and Kathleen came around the corner of the house. She didn't look at all surprised to see him. "How much did you hear?" she asked, collecting the bucket where it sat next to the water barrel.

"Most of it, I think," he said. "Swarthy? Nice. Racist much?"

She marched up to him, chin set. Her eyes drilled into his. "Speak to me more of your faraway land, sir, and this time leave out naught if you value your skin."


	3. In Which Cisco is Obliged to Confide His Temporal Origins to His Fair Hostess, and Imparts Startling Intelligence of a Future Woman's Life

"And then I woke up," he said. "Here. And you told me that I was three hundred and forty-six years away from home."

They were in her front room. She'd sorted and tied the herbs she'd picked from the field, hanging them from a rafter as he spoke, saying only, "This must be done before they wilt."

Maybe they did, but the way she wrapped thread around the stems of each bundle and hung them up at perfect, precise distances from each other made Cisco think of Caitlin, checking each one of her Erlenmeyer flasks for water spots as a way of focusing on something that wasn't too big for her to handle.

She hung up the last bundle and sat down in front of the fire, looking at him hard. "What is this breaching?" she said. "You mumbled the same word when you first woke. I know of two definitions and neither apply to traveling through time."

"Normally it's not about time travel," he said. "Trust me, this is a new feature."

"It sounds to me as if you were toying with something you ought not." She reached over to the table for a basket and fished out some needles and a ball of yarn. When she arranged them in her hands, it turned out to be a knitted tube that she started to work on, insanely fast.

"No," he said, trying not to be distracted by the flicker of her fingers and the faint click of the needles. "I was doing what I always did. I know what I'm doing when I'm breaching."

"Which was?"

Goddamn, she wasn't even looking at her hands. "I - it's kind of like - " He folded his hands on top of his head and stared at the ceiling, trying to come with a metaphor that wasn't from Star Trek. He'd never realized how many of his metaphors were tied to the 20th and 21st centuries. "Okay, you've got a door here." He walked over to it, putting his hand on the rough wood. "You walk through and you're outside. You're not in your house anymore."

She gave him a very Caitlin-ish look. "I know how doors work."

"Yeah," he said. "So that's what I do. Except I don't need a door to be there already. I make it myself and I go through."

"Would it not be easier to just use the door?"

Oh yeah, she was feeling salty. "Sure, except that the other side isn't outside, two feet away. It could be anywhere. Hundreds of miles away. Thousands, even." Another dimension.

He decided not to get into that. Isaac Newton wouldn't float the multiverse theory for another thirty years or so, and it wouldn't spread any further than that for another two and a half centuries.

Kathleen's eyes narrowed. "How?"

"It's, uh. It's a thing I can do." Because of genetics and dark matter and a particle accelerator explosion and doppelgangers and Eobard Wells and a million other things that even he didn't completely understand yet.

"Show me."

"Okay," he said. "Don't freak out."

She knitted away, staring him down, as unfreaked as it was possible to be.

He put his hand out and thought of Harvard again. The Harvard of now, of 1672. Just a few buildings and a huddle of white dudes studying to be ministers.

_There. Open the door to there._

The air began to swirl in front of him, a tiny shivering blotch nothing like the blossoming power of his usual breaches. He gritted his teeth.

_Come on! Open up._

Reluctantly, the first spiral of purple-white took shape, gathering others, but tendrils, threads - what was wrong? Why wasn't the breach opening for him?

A silvery clang, and just like that, Cisco lost it. The breach sucked itself into nothing and was gone.

Kathleen sat staring. One of her needles lay on the hearthstones where she'd dropped it.

He panted. "That," he said. "That wasn't. The way it usually looks."

Her mouth opened, then closed. She licked her lips, swallowed, and said, "How does it usually look?"

"Bigger," he said.

She leaned over to pick up the dropped needle, then put her knitting back in the basket and walked over to peer at the spot where the breach had barely opened. She moved around it carefully, squinting.

He flexed his hands. He didn't have the knife-edged headache from yesterday, but it had felt like he was dragging something stuck in mud. His breaches were always so easy, power rushing through him like water from a hose. The hard part in the beginning had been knowing what to do with all that wild rush, how to gather it, where to center it.

His hands shook.

He looked up. Kathleen had her fingers pressed to her mouth, her eyes very big over her fingertips. They looked oddly shiny. Like she was about to cry.

Fear?

"I'm not a demon," he said. "I'm just a man who can do something unusual, okay? I - "

She blinked a few times and dropped her hand. She took a few deep breaths. "I undressed you, sir. I know that you are a man."

His face went hot. "Uh. Yeah. Okay."

She swallowed. "You say they are bigger."

"Yeah. And easier. Normally. Big enough for two people to jump through."

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know."

"Mayhaps if you try again."

"Yeah, maybe." He thought hard for a moment. He'd pictured 2018 Harvard yesterday, and gotten 1672 Harvard. Maybe that was what he needed to do. He nodded and stretched out his hands again

It was even harder this time. He clawed for the breach. It slid through his fingers, like trying to catch a bubble in a bathtub. For a moment, he had it, caught in the palm of his hand, and the air started to twist the way it was supposed to. Then it slid away, and the air cleared.

" _Shit!"_

A headache chewed at his temples. He pressed his hands to them, trying not to panic. Fear led to anger, anger led to hate, hate led to . . . .

Well, apparently nothing anymore, _because he couldn't fucking breach._

Gradually he became aware of Kathleen's voice, soft and soothing. "Shhhh, shhhh, 'twill be well. Breathe. Cisco? Do you hear me? Breathe. Listen to my voice. Breathe in. And out. In. And out."

He opened his eyes to see her standing in front of him, gripping his wrists. She met his gaze with those familiar honey-colored eyes.

The resemblance to Caitlin centered him. He breathed with her words and finally was able to drop his hands. The headache still thudded in his temples but it didn't stab anymore.

She dropped her hands too. "I'm sorry."

"I don't know what's going on," he said. "I don't know why I can't do it."

"There could be any number of reasons," she said.

"She says, having never seen meta powers in her life before," he snapped.

Her eyes narrowed. "But I know injuries, and I brought you to my home unconscious but a day ago. 'Tis rank folly to assume that you are fully recovered."

He flinched. "Sorry I snarled at you," he said. "That was dickish."

"If dickish means boorish, then yes. You were."

He rubbed his eyes. "God, you're so much like Caitlin."

"Your Caitlin - is she here in this time with you? Lost?"

"No," he said. "I left her in the future. Where she belongs. Where I belong. Except I'm never going to get back there if I can't breach!" He heard the panic swelling in his voice again and turned away, staring out the window, counting his breathing.

After a long moment, she said, "You must give it time. As I said, you were unconscious in a field but a day ago. And that was after your . . . powers did something terribly unexpected. Have they never surprised you before, sir?"

"Constantly," he said.

"And have you taken injury from it?"

He rubbed his temples, wishing for more of her willow bark tea. "Actually, yeah." He remembered the first time he'd breached within a dimension, not crossing from one to the other. One of the first times Savitar had fought the Flash, and they'd needed to get there fast. And then the headache that hit him like a truck afterwards.

"And what happened then?"

"Caitlin gave me painkillers and told me not to breach for a few days. Then I practiced and got the hang of it."

His breathing calmed. Maybe this was just like that.

"Good," she said. "Your Caitlin is a sensible woman. So you shall do that again."

He turned. "Can you take me to the field where you found me? I want to see it. Maybe something there affected my breaching."

She hummed thoughtfully. "'Tis a field like any other. If you like, we can do that," she said. "But I must wash your clothes first."

"Come on. That can wait, right?"

"They have been soaking all this morning. If they're not washed soon, there won't be sun enough to dry them before it sets. Do you want mildew? Because that's how you get mildew. "

* * *

He insisted on helping, hoping it would distract him and calm him down the way that doing anything with his hands always did. It worked damn well, because it turned out that without electricity, washing clothes took a few hours and a hell of a lot of elbow grease.

Kathleen added her own shifts and a skirt that had been badly soiled to the batch. "As long as I am doing all this work," she said.

When they got into it, he understood why. Nobody would want to do all this any more often than they absolutely had to.

Water had to be boiled over the fire, carried hot and slopping outside, then poured into the barrel. Then all the clothes had to be soaped, scrubbed, and then apparently get the shit beat out of them with a broad, flat stick like a cricket bat.

Kathleen noticed him staring and said, "Are the fabrics delicate? They did not seem so."

"Nope," he said. "Not delicate at all." He watched her beat the wet clothes with an arm that would have put A-Rod to shame. "My jeans are gonna be soft as butter, though."

Kathleen looked amused. "Are you so wealthy sir, that you've never so much as witnessed the the washing of your own clothes?"

"I wash my own clothes! But actually, we have machines that do most of the work."

"You must tell me of that. But I first I need more rinse water."

After he came back with a steaming bucket, he tried to explain the concept of washing machines and dryers. She understood the idea of a twisting, swishing drum with water for washing, and a blast of hot air to dry, and pronounced both "most clever." But she kept getting tripped up on how exactly it all worked.

"Electricity," he said, wringing out his jeans by hand. Shit, wait, this was a century, easy, before Ben Franklin's kite-and-key-and-lightning experiment. "So, uh, what that is - "

"I heard an educated fellow speak of it once," she said, twisting a linen shift into a rope to wring out the water and then slapping it against a rock, leaving wet splotches behind. "Back in London. Something to do with amber, and sparks. It seemed a mere curiosity." The shift subdued to her liking, she unwound it from its rope, gave it a snap, and pinned it to the line.

"Yeah, well, in my time, it runs everything for us. Lights and washing machines and heating the house and, you know. Everything."

She blinked. "What a helpful curiosity."

They hung everything up on a line. Kathleen made sure to hang his in a spot almost up against the house, where they couldn't be seen unless you walked right around a tree. "Full sun would dry them faster," she said. "But the day is warm and this will hide them from view while we're gone."

"Smart," Cisco admitted.

She fingered his t-shirt. "I have never seen so fine a knit. And is this paint?" She brushed her finger over the design. "Gryffindor," she read aloud. "Slytherin? I've never heard of these families, and yet they are clearly noble. Why do you wear four coats-of-arms?"

"They're not real," he said. "They're from a story."

"You must tell it to me sometime," she said, letting his shirt go. "I like a good story."

By mid-afternoon, they'd finished hanging everything up. Kathleen got dinner started so it would cook while they were gone, and Cisco drank some more tea because his head was killing him. Finally, in the late afternoon, they set off for the field to investigate.

She set a brisk pace, until she noticed him lagging. "Are you wearied? Perhaps we should not go."

"No, I'm fine," he said. "Just, why don't we take our time?"

She dropped back, matching his strides. "Washing day can be wearying."

"You're not kidding," he said. "How often do you do that?"

"Once a week, perhaps."

"Oh my god. And you're working on all the other things too - cooking and cleaning and gathering herbs and gardening and all of it."

"If I didn't do those things, I wouldn't survive."

"Was it easier when your husband was alive?"

She shrugged. "Easier in some ways. Harder in others. Tell me your story."

"What story?"

"The one from your shirt. The tale of Gryffindor and Slytherin. Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. 'Twill pass the time as we walk."

"That one. Okay." He pushed his hair off his sweaty forehead, thinking where to start. "So it's sort of a fantasy story. It's about this boy named Harry Potter . . ." He filled her in haphazardly on the background of the story. He paused when he got to the part about wizards, remembering fundamentalist Christians protesting the books, but she just smiled and encouraged him to go on. Reassured, he did, getting into Hagrid rescuing Harry from the Dursleys and whisking Harry off to London. But when he started talking about the Hogwarts express, where Harry met Ron and Hermione, she interrupted him.

"Hermione? Is that a boy's name in your time?"

"No, she's a girl."

"Truly? And she goes to school? With them?"

"Yeah, that's what I said. So he learns how to ride a broom and play Quidditch and there's this nasty jerk of a teacher named - "

"Is she a child of wealth?"

He blinked, derailed. "What, Hermione? No. I mean, I guess her parents do okay. But they're dentists. She's no Draco Malfoy. Oh, that's this really rich, really snotty kid who goes to school with them. He's a Slytherin, obviously."

"What is a dentist?"

"Uh, like a doctor for your teeth?"

"The daughter of tooth-drawers, and she is permitted to attend school? To study with boys?"

"Not just permitted. She's the smartest one there. Everyone says so."

Kathleen looked baffled. "But - forgive me. I don't understand. Did her mother not require her assistance at home? Did she not have brothers or sisters to look after? Was she not obligated to help support her family?"

"No," he said. "Of course not."

She looked away, into the forest. "Well," she said. "'Tis a fantastical story, as you said."

He stopped in the path, looking at her hard, remembering things he'd heard about girls and education in the past.

"What?" she asked, stopping a few paces in front of him.

"It is a fantasy," he said. "But Hermione going to school isn't the fantastical part."

"Is it not?"

"Kathleen, didn't you go to school? You have a Bible, and you read my shirt. You have to have gone to school."

She fiddled with the strings dangling from her cap. "I went to a dame school until I was seven," she said. "Some called it foolishness to send a girl, but my father wished for me to know how to read the Bible, and my mother thought figuring very necessary to run a household and not be cheated by merchants. For a short time, I had a whim that I would go to grammar school and study Latin and Greek and scientific pursuits. But that was a child's fancy." She chewed her lip. "I believe I knew it even at the time."

"That doesn't seem fair."

"I was needed at home. My younger brothers promised me faithfully that if they should go, they would teach me all that they learned."

"Nice of them."

"Oh, yes, it was vastly kind." She started walking again, her voice brisk and matter-of-fact. "It came to naught, however. John died of the smallpox and Arthur was needed in my father's shop, and my other brothers were too young to know that I had ever wished such a thing."

"Kathleen," he said to her back.

She shook her head. "As I said. Twas a whim."

When he caught up with her, she gave him the kind of smile that he always thought of as Caitlin's Brave Little Toaster smile. "Go on with your story. It's most diverting. What does Hermione do at school?"

"You know," he said slowly, "girls do go to school. In my time? They don't have to stay home."

Her smile wobbled and dissolved. "But then - who does all the housework? Who cooks and cleans and washes? Who looks after the little ones? A family is too much work for one pair of hands. A woman must needs have help."

"I . . . " He thought of how long it had taken them to wash clothes today, hours of focused, grueling work, and how little actual time he devoted to it at home. Ten minutes to sort it, chuck it in the machine, add detergent, and push a button, and then he could walk off and do whatever while the machine chugged away. A brief break to transfer the loads from washer to dry. Then another fifteen or twenty minutes, maybe, to fold it and put it away. "It just doesn't take as long in my time, is all."

"Because of electricity?"

"Yeah. And families aren't so big in my time. Maybe two or three kids, not eight or nine."

Her face was all crunched up, like Caitlin's when she was trying to grasp something just out of her reach. "But then what do the girls study?"

"The same stuff as boys. They can be scientists or writers or doctors or anything. Whatever."

"Ministers?"

"Not in every religion, but yeah. Ministers too."

She looked away from him and murmured, "How extraordinary."


	4. In Which Cisco is Yet Unable to Discern the Nature of His Difficulties, but Kathleen Acquires Even More Painful Knowledge of the Future

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some quick CWs: There's mention of an underage relationship and abortion, as well as period-typical infant and child death. It's true to the time period but if any of these are triggering for you, please take care of yourself.

They walked on in silence, until the trees broke and a field spread out before them. Kathleen stopped. "This is it."

"This," Cisco said, staring out at the field.

"Aye." She shrugged. "'Tis a field like any other. Full of excellent herbs and plants, but nothing special about it otherwise."

"Can you show me where you found me?"

She walked him to a deep divot in the earth, grasses and flowers crushed and torn out of the earth to reveal the trench of mud underneath.

"That's where I landed?" he asked.

"Aye. All crumpled up, mud from head to foot."

He rubbed a hand over the back of his head, where the knot had subsided. "Okay, I get why my clothes were in such bad shape. And why I was so sore yesterday." He frowned at the dent in the ground. Damn. He'd plowed through like a meteor, hadn't he?

But that had been after he'd gotten yanked to the past. Was there something around here that had done the dirty deed?

He walked around the landing site a few times, wishing he had all his gadgets from Star Labs. Something that would measure radiation or dark matter or anti-dark matter. Was that a thing? Oh shit, with his luck, it was, and the next Big Bad would be all about it.

Without his gadgets, all he could calculate was that he was walking around in a field of grass and wildflowers.

Not far away, there was a boulder. Something about the shape tugged at his neurons. He went over to study it, squatting down to squint at the surface.

Kathleen put up with it for a few minutes before saying, "Cisco?"

"Mmmm."

"If you intend to peer at rocks all day, I shall gather more willowbark."

"Mmmmmm. Yeah. What?"

"Willow bark," she repeated. "I need more. You have been drinking a vast quantity."

He gave her a thumbs-up without looking away from the rock. What _was_ it about that? "Cool beans. Knock yourself out. Heads-up when we gotta boogie."

A moment of silence, and then she said, "I understood most of those words, and yet took none of their meaning."

He looked up, blinking, and laughed. He'd been trying to rein in his slang, here in the past, but caught up in the mystery of the rock, he'd forgotten. "I mean, that's fine. Let me know when you'd like to leave."

He walked around the rock a few more times, trying to work out why it seemed so familiar. Only when he stood at a spot between the rock and the divot in the ground did it snap into place.

The park next to Witchfield Comics & Collectibles.

He turned slowly, looking at the slope of the ground, the scatter of trees. Some of them might be the same trees, three hundred-some years earlier. But there was no road, no shops, no old saltbox colonial.

It was intensely disorienting.

Did this rock have something to do with it?

He crouched and studied it. Just a basic grey rock as far as he could tell. Weathered and pitted, maybe a little less than when he'd first seen it. But without a magnet or any lab equipment, he couldn't glean much about its makeup. He straightened up, staring down at it.

If this rock had sent him to the 17th century, maybe it could send him back.

He stretched out his hand and thought hard about the 21st century. The road there, and the comic shop there, behind him, and - and -

But it was like the power swirled just out of reach.

He dropped his hand, swallowing a thick feeling in his throat. He'd be fine. He just had to recover. Sleep and let the headaches pass and . . .  

He took a shuddering breath and clenched his fists.

And hey, breaching wasn't the only thing he could do. He hadn't had one vibe, but that was because he hadn't been trying, and reining them in was one of the first things he'd taught himself to do.

He rubbed his fingertips over his eyes and thought, _See something. Anything._

That wasn't productive.

_Caitlin. I want to see Caitlin in the 21st century._

Zilch. Again. A headache gathered at the base of his skull. He breathed carefully and reached up to twist his fingers in the red neckcloth around his neck. The one that had belonged to David Snow and been put away for months in the chest.

_Show me Kathleen's husband._

But only the dark behind his eyes answered him.

He dropped his hand. His head was killing him. He massaged his temples and breathed in and out until his head stopped pounding and his stomach stopped pitching.

_It'll be fine. Fine!_

He should go find Kathleen.

He found her basket, piled high with woody scraps, and then her a few minutes later.  She was crouched over a patch of weedy plants with sharp, thin leaves and fuzzy purple flowers, frowning at a few beheaded stems in the patch.

"What is it?" he said.

She glanced up briefly, then peered at the cut stems again. "Naught."

"You're thinking something." He knew that expression. Her several-greats-granddaughter made it all the time. "So spill."

She frowned at him. "I was thinking I should very like to know Martha Wilkins' business in this field."

"It's a field. Maybe she was taking a nature walk."

"To where? The nearest town is a full day's journey afoot." She fingered the cut stems and let them go. "I hope she does not think to do something foolish."

"Like what?" He poked at a flower. "What is that?"

"Pennyroyal," she said as if it should mean something.

"Okay . . ."

"You're not familiar with it?"

He shrugged. "What does it do?" he asked, leaning over and picking one of the leaves. It smelled minty and clean.

"Oh, many uses," she said, adjusting her hat against the sun. "It deters pests, for one. I put pennyroyal in the mattress to ward off bedbugs."

He immediately felt itchy. "Thanks," he said. "That's good to know. But why would this Martha girl do something foolish with pest control leaves?"

She gave him a significant look. "It's also of use in preventing childbirth."

Ye olde birth control. Interesting. "How do you do that?"

She gathered up her basket. "When a woman suspects that she has conceived and wishes not to bear a child, or knows she ought not, I give her a strong tea of the leaves. She suffers painful cramps and illness, but her womb expels its contents."

He paused and looked at her hard. "So, wait. You're talking about an abortion."

She checked her harvest of willowbark, patting it down into the basket and folding a cloth over it. "It is called such, yes."

"Aren't you a Christian?"

She reared back like he'd insulted her mother. "Of course I am!"

"Okay, okay, simmer. Just checking. I thought you weren't supposed to do that. It's, like, a sin."

"Only if the babe has quickened." At his confused expression, she said, "You know? When the child kicks for the first time?"

"Oh," he said. "So before that - it's just fine? Everybody's fine with it?"

She shook her head at him. "We are not _French_ , you know," she said. "Nor are we Spaniards. _We_ are Englishmen, and we are sensible about these things."

He struggled to bite back a bubble of laughter that she almost certainly wouldn't appreciate. "Look, I agree," he said. "It's just that where I come from, a lot of people who say they're Christian also think a woman shouldn't ever have an abortion for any reason."

"At all?"

"Never ever."

She frowned at him. "Surely when the work of laboring will kill the woman - "

He shook his head.

She looked appalled. "How if the babe has died in the womb?"

"The most hardcore ones say no."

"That could kill a woman, to carry a dead child within her."

"Yeah, they seem to be fine with that."

Now she looked sick. "And these are Christians?"

"They say they are. So if you're okay with a woman getting rid of her unwanted pregnancy, why are you worried about Martha?"

"I must take great care, with pennyroyal," she said. "My mother was wont to say that the only difference between medicine and poison is the - "

"The amount," Cisco finished. "Caitlin says that too."

She glanced at him. "Martha would not be the first foolish girl who thinks she can dose herself."

"Do you even know she's pregnant?"

She worried the strings of her cap. "I know I have seen her walking on the path to this very field. And I've seen Josiah Miller do the same, shortly before or after."

"Josiah? As in, Josiah the reverend's son that came to your house earlier?" When she nodded, he said, "And how old is Martha?"

"Fifteen," she said.

 _"What?"_ Okay, okay. This was a different time. Girls got married young, and Josiah wasn't, like, _old_ or anything. Hell, he was probably a catch -

"She is far too young and trusting," Kathleen fairly growled. "If my suspicions are true, he is no better than a wolf preying on a lamb."

"Yes! Thank you. Total predator. Nasty. Is she even old enough to get married in this time?"

"She is full young. 'Tis not out of the question, I suppose. But if such was his intention, he would have spoken to her father."

"In my time, he would have gotten arrested."

"If he is found guilty of fornication, he will be."

"Nice. Good. He should be."

"And so will she." At his look, she shrugged. "She has fornicated, too."

"You really think she deserves the same punishment?"

"When they wrote the laws of this colony, I was not consulted," she said, leading the way back to the path.

* * *

He was ready to drop by the time they got back to her house, and his head pounded worse than ever. But she said immediately, "I shall go into town and check on Martha. See what she will tell me. Hopefully she is not such a fool as I fear her to be."

"Have fun with that," he said, pouring himself more willow bark tea.

"If you like, you may read the Bible whilst I am gone," she said, pointing out a shelf set into the wall of her front room. "There is still light enough."

"Um. Thanks."

"I shall return before sundown."

After his headache receded, he got bored enough to check his phone, stored in the chest. It wasn't like he could browse Twitter, but there were some games that didn't require a connection.

But the battery was dead as dust, and he put it back away, cursing himself for not thinking to turn it off and save the charge. He wandered back into the front room and found himself looking at the Bible.

Even when he was still nominally Catholic, meaning he got dragged to church every Sunday, he hadn't been a Bible reader. Well, it wasn't really a thing for Catholics. Protestants though, they were big on it. And clearly Kathleen, or David, had read it a lot. The book was battered around the corners and the pages well-thumbed.

Next to it was a thinner book with a floppy leather cover. He picked it up, not sure what to expect, and took it out ot the garden where the lowering sun still threw a lot more light than the banked coals of the fire.

In the inside front cover, in a scratchy, hard-to-read scrawl, someone had written, _To bothe our dere girls, this little booke is intended for a recorde of the heling plants of the Newe World, for we well knowe such will bring thee joye to create. We do bid thee, go with God & fynd the happynes He hath in store. Signed this day the 4th of May 1664, thy loving mother, Emma, and thine own Aunt. _

He was poring over the notes and sketches in the book when Kathleen came back. "Hey," he said as she undid the strings of her hat. "Any luck?"

Kathleen's lips were pressed together in annoyance. "Stubborn wench," she muttered.

"I take that as a no."

"I warned her to take much care with herbs and physick, but she sat there as if butter should not melt in her mouth." She swatted her hat on her thigh. "I can only hope she took my words to heart anyway. What have you found?"

He held up the journal. "It was next to the Bible," he said. "Hope that's okay."

"Oh," she murmured, reaching out for it. "I have not made notes in this book in many months."

"Did you draw all the pictures?"

"Mmmm," she said, paging through it.

"You're really good at drawing."

"I must needs be accurate," she said absently. "My mother gave me this. A parting gift."

"Yeah. The inscription said something about both girls. Did your sister come here with you?"

A pause, and then she sighed. "Aye. She did."

"Where is she now?"

"I know not," she said, closing the book and sliding it into some hidden pocket in her skirt. "I have not seen her in some years."

"What was - "

She interrupted him. "I am fair famished and wish to eat my dinner. Are you?"

"I could eat," he said as his stomach growled. He followed her inside, wondering what the story was with Kathleen's sister.

* * *

In the middle of the night, he woke up again, but unlike the night before, he didn't drift back asleep in a few minutes. Instead, he found himself looking up into the dim ceiling.

When sleep eluded him, he rolled over and found the mattress in front of the fire unoccupied. From the other room, he could hear soft, rhythmic creaks and thumps. It was the noise of the spinning wheel Kathleen had gotten down after dinner.

He got up, found his pants draped over a chair, and stepped into them. Without bothering to tuck in the yards of shirt, he buttoned them up and went to the other room.

Kathleen sat before the fire, foot moving steadily on the treadle, fingers feeding fluff from a basket into the spinning wheel. She looked up at his footstep and smiled. "The sleeper wakes," she said, foot and fingers never pausing.

"Hey," he said, pulling up a stool next to the wheel. He found it fascinating. It was something right out of a fairy tale, Rumpelstiltskin or Sleeping Beauty, but the big whirling wheel was actually just the brute force for a complex machine. All the most interesting parts were snuggled up together at the other end of the frame, a dance of moving parts that produced strong, even yarn like magic.

There was a bobbin for the yarn to go onto, and a drive band that went around the big wheel and down to the smaller pulley, and a tension knob to change the thickness, and the foot treadle that propelled the big wheel, not to mention a whole host of other little gizmos that did mysterious things. Nobody had ever told him a spinning wheel was such an interesting machine.

He watched it go, tracking all the moving parts in the dim light of the fire. How many times had he seen a setup just like this in an industrial engine, in a car engine, in one of his own gadgets, and never known this was where it had come from?

His fingers itched to get into it.

"So, can't sleep?" he asked.

"Hmmm?" She blew a little wisp of hair out of her eyes. She wore only a long linen shift, with a big shawl wrapped around her shoulders and her hair in a braid that trailed down her back.

He waved his hand around. "It's got to be - what? Midnight?"

"Thereabouts," she said. "Or perhaps one of the clock."

"But you're awake."

"I slept some hours." She raised her brows at him. "As did you."

"Yeah, I'm going to be all sluggish tomorrow." Oh, for seventeenth century Starbucks.

"Why? 'Tis a good sign."

"How?"

"You are sleeping normally again. It bodes well for your recovering strength."

"Normally? We're both up in the middle of the night! That's not normal."

She blinked. "Is it not?"

". . . no? Wait. Are you saying you always wake up like this?"

"Everyone does. We sleep some three or four hours in the early night, wake for a time, and then sleep again until dawn. Are you saying you don't?"

"No! I usually stay up 'til like ten, eleven, and then I sleep straight through until six or seven when I have to get up."

"How odd," she said. "When you said that you came from a far, strange land, you were more right than you knew."

"No kidding," he said, trying to take it in. They even _slept_ different in the past.

The spinning wheel slowed to a stop, and she flexed her fingers. The basket on her lap was empty, and the bobbin full. "There," she said, doing something mysterious with all the wheels and bands, and lifting the bobbin out. "That is the last of that batt. I must needs trade for more in town." She dropped the bobbin in her basket, set it on the mantelpiece, and moved the spinning wheel to its old spot next to the fire.

"So can I take it apart tomorrow?" He'd wanted to have a look at it since the first moment she'd set it up. "I want to see how it works."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "So long as you put it all back together, sir. I shall be most displeased if my spinning wheel is broken beyond repair."

"Better than you left it," he promised. "So you just have these chill hours in the middle of the night every night?"

"'Tis not so very cold," she said, settling herself on the stool again.

"I mean, relaxing."

"Oh! Yes."

"That's good," he said. "It sounds nice."

"'Twas always my favorite time," she said dreamily, staring into the flames. She seemed softer at night, fewer things weighing on her shoulders, her guard dropped. "The day is so busy, you know. Full of so much to do. But in the night like this, David and I would talk and laugh and cuddle and . . . " She glanced at him. "Other things."

"I think I can guess," he said.

She giggled. "I would feed the baby, and then we would play with him until we were all three tired and wished to sleep again." She sighed.

"Wait," Cisco said. "You have a son? How old is he?" Maybe he was off being an apprentice or something. That started early if he remembered right.

Kathleen looked away.

Cisco's stomach turned over. "Kathleen," he said. "Where's your son?"

"Gone," she said. "A few days before David."

The realization settled cold over him - she had lost her son and her husband in the space of less than a week. "So they - they both got sick at the same time?"

She shook her head. "Johnny first," she said, voice trembling. "David after . . .  after Johnny died."

"I'm sorry."

She shook her head again. Her chin trembled. "My mother lost my brother in much the same way. We all had the smallpox at once, but he took it the worst, and so quickly. We all grieved, but I never truly understood why my mother suffered so long until I lost a child of my own."

He reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. "My brother died a couple of years ago." Hundreds of years in the future. "My mama - she still - it's really bad. I know."

She stared into the flames again, the thousand yard stare he'd seen too much in Caitlin right after the particle accelerator explosion. "What would they do, in your time?" she asked in a trembling voice. "Are there miracles they could work, with machines and electricity, for a little boy with a fever?"

Did she mean her son or her brother? Or did it matter?

He wasn't sure he should be answering this, but he couldn't think of any reason not to. "Uh, well, his parents would take him to a hospital. And the doctors there would do tests and things and give him medicine."

"But if his fever was too high? If he became delirious?"

Medical shows flashed across his brain, tiny little children with wires and tubes and beeping machines. "They have medicine for that too."

Her voice was small and lost. "So little boys never die of fevers in your time?"

"Probably they do," he said. "But . . . but not so often. Hardly ever, even."

Tears trickled down her face. "And what about a tiny baby girl? Born too early to a mother little more than a girl herself?"

"Kathleen, I don't think I should - "

"Tell me! What would happen to a little girl, small and weak her whole short life? What would happen when she simply stopped eating one day? When no matter what her mother and her grandmother and all her aunts did, she drifted away to heaven like a flower petal?"

He swallowed hard. How old had Kathleen been? Maybe not much older than Martha Wilkins. "What was her name?" he asked gently. "Your daughter."

Her face crumpled. "Mary Anna Snow. My little Molly. Could she have lived, in your time?"

He scooted his stool closer and put his arm around her shoulders, hugging her close. She folded into his side. He said softly, "If a baby's born too early, they have machines at the hospital that can help feed her, or help her breathe, until she's strong enough to go home."

She sobbed, her ribs jerking against his hand.

He didn't know whether it was the right thing to say or not, but he said it anyway. "Kathleen, sometimes the doctors can't help. Even in my time, babies still die. Women still lose the men they love. People still wake up one day and find out they don't have a big brother anymore. And there's other things. It's not perfect. I think that's impossible."

She let out jerking little cries into his shoulder. He stroked her hair. "I'm so sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry about your babies."


	5. In Which Much Home Repair is Undertaken and a Seduction Goes Awry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a long and hectic week, so I have to confess - the next chapter isn't done. It's not even close to done. And believe me, it's not the last chapter in this story. So you may see it on Monday, but you may not. You'll at least see it on Friday. I mean. I'm pretty sure.

He found her in the garden early the next morning, pulling weeds. "How are you?" he asked, crouching to pick up a stray weed that had missed the basket she was tossing them into. 

She straightened up, pushing her hands into the small of her back for a moment. "I am well," she said thoughtfully. 

He squinted up at her. "I'm sorry I brought that all up."

"I'm not," she said. "I have not spoken of my little Molly in years, and I have had no one to speak of David or Johnny to, in the months since I lost them. I wrote to my family upon their passing, but I have got no reply." 

"What about the people in town? Don't you have any friends there?" They couldn't all be like the bad-vibe Reverend, right?

"They were sympathetic, but I am accounted odd. And I do believe they think I am grieving overmuch."

"You grieve as much as you need."

She smiled at him. "You were very kind."

"I've lost people, too. I know what it feels like."

"Your brother."

"Yeah. And my good friend, who was Caitlin's - " He paused, trying to think of the best way to describe it. "Well, he was her husband by the time he died." The second time. "And there was this other guy, an older man that I really looked up to, and he didn't die, exactly, but I lost him all the same." 

She looked puzzled.

He sighed. "I'm rambling. Um, what I mean is, grief is a weird, hard thing. Life goes on and all that stuff, but grief goes on too, and they never mention that."

"No," she said. "They never do." She cocked her head at him. "Where did a mere tinkerer gain such wisdom?"

"When my brother died, I started going to this one meeting every week. We'd talk about things. It really helped."

A strange expression crossed her face, but then she smiled. "That sounds nice."

"It does help."

"I don't doubt that," she said. "Even though I wept, I feel as if a weight had been shifted in my heart, for the chance to say their names. Thank you, Cisco."

"You're welcome."

"And you? How do you do this morning?"

"Other than feeling like crap for making you cry during your nice relaxing awake hours?" He used his thumbnail to split the weed in two. "I've been better."

"Your head?"

"Not yet." Soon, probably. It was getting so he could tell time by it. "Thing is, I miss the 21st century. I miss all my friends."

"Caitlin?"

"Yeah, of course. And Iris and Barry."

She pulled another weed, her eyes steady on his.

"And you know what? I miss my stuff. I miss my apartment and my bed and my TV and the Internet and my comic books and running water and having a refrigerator and being able to order a pizza on my phone."

She looked as if half of what he'd said was gibberish to her. Well, it probably was. He sighed and chucked the weed into the basket. "I'm homesick."

"'Tis not so very strange," she said gently. "But it has barely two days. You must be patient and recover, and allow your powers to return in their own time."

"Yeah, I know. I'm trying."

"You will get home," she said. "I believe this."

He made himself smile at her. "Thanks."

She wiped her hands in her apron. "If you are feeling better in truth, then I have certain things that must be attended to this afternoon which require another set of hands. Perhaps 'twill distract you from your homesick thoughts." 

"Uh-oh," he said brightly. "Hard things?"

"Oh," she said, her lips quirking up, "nothing so very strenuous."

* * *

Standing in her loft, holding a bundle of thatch steady over his head, he yelled, "You call this nothing so strenuous?"

Her voice came from the other side of the thatched roof. "You're merely holding up some reeds!"

While she freaking  _ sewed _ them into place, passing the twine down to him through the roof so he could wrap them under the lathes that made a frame for the thatch, and pass it back up.

"For twenty minutes!" he yelled back. "I can't feel my arms anymore!" Not to mention the mice and bugs that had fallen out of the rotting thatch they'd ripped out. He refused to believe that he'd screamed, no matter what Kathleen said.

"City fellow," she laughed.

"Heartless woman," he grumbled.

"Would you rather climb about out here?" she asked, reaching down for the twine and tugging it through. 

He thought of being on top of the roof, feet slipping in the thatch, twentyish feet above the very hard ground and said, "Who needs to feel their arms anyway?"

She laughed again.

When the roof was repaired to her liking, she climbed down, coming in the door and gazing proudly up at the roof. "Ah," she said. "It feels good to have that done. 'Twill keep the spring rains out better now."

He was shaking feeling back into his arms. "Tell me that was it."

"Well," she said. "That is all for the roof."

"I had to ask."

The next chore was patching the inside of the walls. He watched her mix together a thick sludge of mud, clay, and silt for the purpose. "Seriously?" he said. "That'll hold?"

"It always has," she said, giving it one last stir. She had mud to her elbows and a smudge on the edge of her nose. "Now, this is called daub. We use it to patch the wall like so." She picked up a glob and slapped it onto a crumbling spot in the wall, smoothing it into place with her fingers. "When it dries, 'twill be most sturdy."

"Not that different than adobe, I guess," he muttered to himself, and scooped up a cool, sloppy handful.

He worked much more slowly than she did, but he had to admit there was something cool about seeing the pitted wall transform into a smooth, clean surface. "So, you built this house yourself?"

"Aye," she said. "David and I, with our own hands. When first we arrived." She nodded at the door to the bedroom. "We added the second room a few years later."  


"That's kind of amazing. Most people don't have anything to do with building in my time. They just buy it and move in."

She wiped her forehead with her sleeve. "'Twould have been less work," she said dryly. "But I do like this house. 'Tis so much more spacious than the one where I grew up."

He laughed, but she looked at him with raised brows, and he said, "Oh, you're serious."

"In truth, my father's house was twice as big as this," she said. "But with ten children, we had scarce room to turn around some days. And the same held for outside the house too."

"Where did you grow up?"

"London," she said. "Crowded and dirty and foul-aired. When we came ashore and I saw the green and the trees and all the open space, I fair wept with joy."

"Is that why you never wanted to go back?"

Her hands slowed for a moment. "Some days I have thought of it," she said. "But 'twas a perilous enough journey to come here. And though my family is back there, when I pray on it, God tells me in my heart that I should stay in the New World." She smiled a little. "So I shall."

He focused on his patch of wall, making it glass-smooth. He'd never heard anyone mention God so much without trying to evangelize to him. Or inform him that he was going to Hell. "Maybe you're meant to be a botanist," he suggested. "Your book and everything."

"This is not your time, sir," she said. "In this place, 'tis not the province of a woman to make discoveries. At least not ones that she may claim for posterity."

"So be the first."

She hummed to herself and wiped her hands on her apron. "Are you done? I should like to check the walls in the other room."

* * *

After they'd found all the crumbly parts of the inside walls and patched them, his headache was crawling back up his brain stem again. It was an old friend by now. Maybe he should name it. Bob. Or Ralph. Good headache names.

He drank tea and took her spinning wheel apart to see how it worked while she went out to check some traps she had set in the forest. She came back jubilant, with a rabbit, and he tried not to look at her skinning it. He didn't entirely succeed, and gave serious thought to going vegetarian. 

But it actually smelled really damn good when she started cooking it.

"How is my wheel?" she asked.

He finished reassembling it and gave the big wheel a spin. "Right as rain." He kind of wanted one now. Not to actually manufacture his own yarn or anything, but just because he liked how it all worked.

She came over and set her foot on the treadle, testing, and gave a hum of approval.

"Don't you trust me?"

"As much as I trust any man I find unconscious in a field," she said, giving him a little grin.

"I see how it is," Cisco said. "I'm nothing special."

She laughed. "Come eat."

He waited, vaguely uncomfortable, while she prayed over their food. He wondered if she noticed that he never prayed with her. It wasn't exactly cool to be an atheist in these times. Even if he felt himself drifting more toward an agnostic viewpoint since Dante died, that probably still wasn't okay in a world so centered around God. Like his sexuality, his spiritual identity was a can of worms that he was just going to leave closed with her.

What if he had to leave them closed forever? What if he never got home?

"Cisco?"

She'd finished her prayer without him noticing, and now looked at him with a familiar crinkle between her brows. "Are you well?" she said gently.

"Yeah!" he said brightly, picking up his spoon. "Starving."

She studied him for a moment, looking far too perceptive. "Will you tell me more of your time?" she asked.

"Sure, anything special?" he asked, tasting the stew. Yep. It was delicious. He said a silent apology to Thumper and spooned up more.

"Tell me about Caitlin," she said.

He chewed a carrot to buy himself time. "What do you want to know?"

Somehow, he didn't want to tell her that his best friend was her great-times-six-granddaughter. Spoilers, after all. And he definitely didn't want to mention that the same woman was a metahuman with an evil - well, chaotic neutral, these days - alter ego. Who knew how Kathleen would react to that?

"How did you meet? You said you knew her husband."

"Yeah. I met both of them at the same time. They were dating - uh, courting - at the time. All of us worked at the same place. Caitlin, too."

"And what did you do together at this place?"

He told her as much as he could about Star Labs and his friendship with Caitlin without getting into the whole quantum physics/supervillain from the future/day-saving superhero aspect. He talked about being there through Ronnie's death, both times. He talked about how she'd had to leave after traumatic events, and how she'd come back the moment he asked. Twice. He talked about her faith in him when his powers came in, about the way she'd always reassured him that there was someone out there for him, how she'd always been there with ice cream and vodka and comfort TV when he'd reached out.

Kathleen ate quietly, listening. "It sounds as if you are a good friend to her."

"She's a good friend to me," he said. "I mean, we're not perfect. There's been times we had fights or we weren't there for each other like we should have been. But we always come back. The past few years have been the kind of time that you need a good friend to depend on."

"Aye," she said, stirring her food. "It can be very hard to be alone."

* * *

He had a fit of gallantry and insisted on trading sleeping spots with her, using the mattress in front of the fire. It took some doing and some not entirely accurate reassurances, but she gave in.

The mattress was all straw covered in scratchy material, on top of a hard floor. But she fell asleep right away in the bed, curled up in her blankets, so he decided it was worth it. He managed to find a position that was decently comfortable and watched the banked fire glimmer in the fireplace.

_ You will get home, _ he told himself.  _ You will.  _

He blinked, and when the blink was done, the fire was much dimmer and the night air cooler. The door creaked, and he rolled over to see Kathleen coming back into the room, her shawl wrapped around her shoulders. 

She gave him a little smile, then crouched down and stirred the coals. "There," she said. "A north wind is moving in. We may get rain in a day or two."

He yawned and sat up. "Good thing we fixed the roof."

She smiled and settled herself down next to him. "How is the mattress?" she asked, touching the scratchy blanket.

"Exactly as comfy as I always thought a pile of straw would be."

She laughed softly. The firelight gilded her cheek and throat. "Perhaps you would be more comfortable in my bed."

"I'm kidding. I'm not kicking you out of your bed again. This is probably good for my back or something."

She shifted closer. "I meant perhaps we - we could share it."

He blinked. Wait. Wait a minute. Did she - was she -  

She licked her lips, leaving them gleaming softly in the firelight, and tugged lightly at the shawl around her shoulders. It loosened and slid down her arms, leaving her in only the thin linen shift, cut square across the tops of her breasts. She smiled at him, with an edge of nerves in the expression.

When he didn't say anything, because he didn't know what the hell to say, she bit her lip and looked down, her lashes shadowing her cheeks.

His brain kicked to life and pointed out firmly that he was sitting, in what was basically ye olde underwear, next to a beautiful woman in  _ her _ underwear. Furthermore, his brain continued, said beautiful underwear-clad woman was making it very clear that they could both get rid of the underwear, if he wanted. 

It further pointed out that while he'd had a few ragged and awkward dates, he hadn't slept with anyone in months. And he definitely wanted to get rid of the underwear.

"Kathleen," he said, and she looked up, the firelight catching in her eyes. She was really beautiful. "I can't deny I'm tempted."

She started to smile.

"But I don't belong here," he said. "I'm not going to stick around."

She shook her head. "I am aware of that. I ask no sweet words or true-love promises."

"Then what - ?"

She reached out and rested her hand tentatively on his chest. "I loved my husband very much, but he has been gone these many cold months, and I wish only to be touched and held and kissed once again."

Her hand was warm through the thin shirt, and when she trailed her fingers over to the vee and skimmed her fingertips up his chest, heat rolled over his skin.

"And you," she went on, more softly. "You are far from home, lost and alone save for my poor self. I think perhaps you would welcome comfort too."

He reached out and ran his fingers up her cheek, and she relaxed with a sigh and a smile. She'd been nervous. Well, yeah, if it was the first time in a year, and maybe the first time with anyone except her dead husband - yeah, maybe she had been nervous about hitting on him.

He smoothed her hair off her forehead and leaned forward to kiss her lightly.

She kissed him back, shyly at first, and warmth bubbled up in his chest. He ran his hands down her back, smooth warm woman, and felt her fingers trace over the exposed skin at his throat again. 

She shifted so they were pressed together, legs tangled, arms entwined. Now her kisses held hunger, and he felt his own hunger rising up to meet it. God, she was so sweet, and so delicious - her tongue sliding into his mouth, her hands stroking down his chest and stomach. 

He kissed along her soft jaw, the delicacy of her ear, the cord of her throat. She let out soft sighs with every new inch of skin, and when he touched his mouth to her pulse point, he felt it thundering under the skin.  


He tugged her shift off her shoulder - "Can I?" "Mmmm," she sighed - revealing the first swell of her breast, and kissed the curve. She let out a little moan, and he thought  _ That sound, that's amazing, that's how I always thought -  _ and he breathed her name against her skin.

She went rigid.

He paused, lifting his head. "Hey," he said. "Everything all right?"

"I - " She looked flushed. "I think perhaps we should stop."

"What?"

She scooted away from him, pulling her shift up, grabbing her shawl from the floor. "This was an ill-begotten notion."

"Wait - what's wrong?" He went over everything he'd been doing, where he'd been touching and kissing, trying to work out what had triggered this. "Did I do something you don't like? Tell me, and I won't do it again."  


She stood biting her lip. "Pride is a sin," she said. "I know this well. But still I have enough pride not to want to be another woman's stand-in."

It crashed over him, slow and inexorable. He shut his eyes, feeling the last word he'd breathed before she called a halt shaping his lips again. "I called you Caitlin."

She clutched her shawl around herself. "Aye."

"Kathleen," he said, slow and deliberate. "I'm sorry. That - I - "

"I pray you will forget this," she said, and almost ran to her bed.


	6. In Which Cisco and Kathleen are Made to Endure Vile Calumny and Infamous Treatment from the Good Folk of Middleton

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: reference to pedophilia toward the end of this chapter. I feel like the past was one giant trigger warning TBH

He woke up in the morning with a headache already. He'd tossed and turned and finally gotten to sleep when the dawn was just starting to lighten the sky.

God, he felt like shit. He couldn't believe he'd done that. He'd basically failed Sex 101 - know who you're with. 

At first, her resemblance to Caitlin had been downright unnerving. But as he'd gotten to know her over the past few days, he'd almost stopped noticing it. Sure, they shared certain similarities, but Kathleen was someone completely different.

Clearly his subconscious didn't think so.

He pushed his face into the pillow and groaned.

"Cisco," Kathleen called from the other room. 

"Yeah," he called back. "I'm awake, I'm getting up, I want to - "

"I go into town," she said. "I shall return shortly."

_ What? _

He kicked the covers off and scrambled to the other room. He caught her at the front door. Thank god he hadn't had to go running out there in this nightshirt with his junk flying in the breeze. "Kathleen! Stop! Just wait a minute, would you?"

She fussed with her basket. "I go to town. I have certain errands to undertake. And I have heard naught of Martha Wilkins. I have a presentiment - "

"Can we talk?"

"I shall return."

"I mean about last night. What happened. Would you look at me?"

She kept her face turned away. "I see no need to talk about that."

"It was a mistake, okay? A slip of the tongue."

"Yes, so you said."

"I want to know that you're okay."

Then she stopped, turning to face him. "I am not 'okay,' as you say," she said. "Why do you think I go to town? I assign you no blame, but I cannot see your face this morning. Let me go, and walk away my humiliation on my own." 

"That's what I'm saying! You don't need to be humiliated. It was my screw-up."

"I see that in the future, men still see fit to dictate a woman's own feelings to her."

He stepped back. "Whoa. Okay. Wow."

Her jaw clenched. "You seek to absolve yourself? Consider absolution granted. The humiliation is mine and the blame is mine as well. I should have known better. Your feelings for Caitlin have been obvious from the first hour."

He gaped at her, struck dumb.

"You look surprised." She shook her head. "If you did not know, then you may take on even less of the blame. But may I suggest some self-reflection today whilst I'm gone? 'Twill do you good, I think." She whirled and stalked down the path, skirts swirling around her ankles, head held high.

* * *

He spent the morning in a complete funk, his brain whirling from Kathleen to Caitlin to his situation and back again, over and over.

Sometimes he tried to convince himself that it had been a dumb mistake. Sometimes, he heard her voice echoing -  _ Your feelings for Caitlin have been obvious from the first hour. _

He wanted to tell himself that he had no idea what she was talking about.

But he very much did.

And  _ god, _ his head hurt.

He drank so much painkiller tea that he had to go to the stream and bring a bucket of water back to refill the pot. Lugging the heavy bucket, he told himself that Kathleen been way off base, snapping at him like that. He wasn't trying to tell her how to feel. He wasn't like that. He'd just been - 

He'd been - 

He'd been feeling like shit and trying to  _ not _ feel like shit because if she was okay, then he hadn't hurt her and it was all fine.

He groaned again.

The door hung wide open and something inside crashed. He dropped the bucket and sprinted forward. "Kathleen?"

But three strangers stood in her front room, pulling down the herbs hung up to dry and throwing them into the fire. Her things littered the floor - pots and pans and rushlight holders and her knitting, pulled off the needles, and the yarn she'd spun the other night, ground into the dirt.

"Hey!" he shouted, and they all turned to face him. "Who the hell are you? What the hell do you think you're doing in her house?"

"He invokes Hell," one of them gasped. "The demon!"

"Oh,  _ shit _ ," Cisco said. Instinctively, he raised his hands and blasted  them - or tried. Of course. Of course that was blocked too.

They were on him before he could get away, hard hands clamping around his arms, solid shoulders slamming into his back. 

The tallest man grabbed him by the front of the shirt and hauled him close. "What have you done to my child, demon?"

"I didn't do anything to anyone," Cisco said, trying to remain calm. Jesus, he wanted his blasts. He'd forgotten what it was like to be powerless like this. "Please let me go. I'm not a demon, I'm just a guy."

"My Martha! My daughter Martha, what manner of curse did you wreak on her?"

He realized that the man's eyes were red and wet, and that something terrible had happened. "I don't know," he said. "I didn't do anything to her. I'm sorry about your daughter."

A fist slammed into his stomach, and all the breath burst out of his mouth as he folded around it. His head buzzed as he panted for air, and then another fist rammed into his jaw, knocking his head sideways.

Through the pain rattling his body, he heard the tall one say, "We need tarry no longer here. This is all the proof we need of the Snow woman's witchcraft."

As they hauled him away, the last thing he saw inside Kathleen's house was the splintered remains of her beloved spinning wheel.

* * *

Middleton was surprisingly close - maybe a quarter of a mile down the path through the forest. If it had been longer, he might have gotten his breath back, might have been able to fight them off and escape - 

Or maybe not.

All three men were solid and muscular, probably from working like stevedores all day every day. Their hands were merciless and one of them muttered prayers under his breath the whole way. Cisco stumbled along between them, trying to work out what had happened.

They had Kathleen, that much was clear from the things they said. And witchcraft? Shit, shit, shit. Wasn't it too early for the Salem Witch Trials? 

_ We hang our witches in Massachusetts, _ Devon's laughing voice said in his mind.

Well, Cisco wasn't laughing anymore.

They dragged him into a squat house like all the other squat, grim houses. It was only when they hauled him into a tiny, musty-smelling room with a barred window in the door, and locked chains around his ankles and wrists, that Cisco realized it wasn't a house, but a jail. 

What the hell kind of settlement had built a jail already?

When he tried to shove himself to his feet, they slammed it and locked it, leaving him in the sour-smelling dimness. The only light - and it wasn't much - came from two small barred windows, one in the door and one on the far wall.  

He shifted, and the chains rattled. He yanked them experimentally, and they yanked back. He followed them back with his hands to find that they were fastened to the wall with a deep-set iron loop. The chains were made of iron as thick as his thumb.

Taking no chances with the "demon," apparently.

"Cisco?" a voice called. "Is that you?"

"Kathleen! Where are you?"

"The other cell. Are you much hurt?"

"They roughed me up a little, but I've had worse. You?"

"Nay. I am well. I lack only liberty."

"What happened?"

She sighed. "Martha Wilkins must have dosed herself with the pennyroyal after all."

"Oh, shit."

"Aye. I cannot be sure. I was not permitted to see her. Martha's father and brothers all flew at me in rage when I knocked on the door. But I did hear that she is much confused, with a mighty pain in her belly, and vomiting powerfully. Those are all symptoms - I have seen it."

"How did they get from that to you?"

"I went to see her the night before she took ill. They say I cast the evil eye upon her, for betraying what she had seen in the field."

"Goddamn," he mumbled, remembering just in time to keep it down. He'd gotten in this mess with one little "hell," after all. "Kathleen, I'm so sorry. This is all my fault."

"'Tis no fault of yours," she said. "Aye, 'tis true that if you had not fallen through time and landed there, Martha Wilkins would have had naught to report. But I firmly believe that she went to that field for pennyroyal, and she would have dosed herself whether you were there or nay."

He slid down the wall until he sat on the dirt floor. "Real talk," he said. "What's going to happen here? We gonna get lynched or what?" He heard his voice shake.

"I don't know what that is," she said. "But they intend to try me for witchcraft."

"When?"

"Whenever the judge arrives in town. If we are lucky, perhaps a few days. If we are not, some weeks."

Weeks? Great. "What about me?"

"The judge is a learned man. He will examine you and see that you are a man like any other."

"Well, that's good. So he'll let us both go, right?"

"I shall still be on trial. And you may, as well. I know not. My greater concern at the moment is the jailer."

"Who's the jailer?"

A door creaked and a set of keys jingled. The light of a lantern spilled down the hall and a shadow followed it. 

"Widow Snow," said a reedy voice. "Are you comfortable?"

Cisco mouthed  _ Are you kidding me right now _ at nothing.

It was Josiah Miller.

"I am not," Kathleen said. He could almost picture the angle of her chin. "How do you expect anyone to be comfortable in here?"

"If you give me a shilling, I shall bring you straw for a bed."

She gave a little sniff. "You'll get no shillings from me."

"Then sleep in the dirt. Mayhap you will learn your lesson about spreading lies."

"I spoke your name to no one, Josiah Miller, not even to Martha. If you hear whispers and see sidelong glances, I suggest you look to your own conduct for the source."

He snorted.

"May I have a Bible? Or will that cost a shilling as well?"

"No," he said, and the light on the far wall shifted until Josiah stood in front of Cisco's cell, peering in. 

Cisco met his eyes. He didn't look much more impressive than he had the other day. A soft jaw, lank hair, wet grey eyes like concrete in a storm gutter, thin lips. He looked like the kind of guy who harassed women on Twitter and then whined about how bitches couldn't take a joke.  


"I have never seen a demon before," he murmured.

"You ain't seein' one now, bucko," Cisco said. 

Josiah acted as if he hadn't spoken, staring him down for another moment or two before turning away and taking the light with him.

Cisco slumped against the wall. The dirt was cold and hard under his butt, and he was hungry, and his head hurt again. 

"Hey Kathleen?" he called out. "Everything’s going to be all right, okay?" He hoped she couldn't hear how his voice cracked.

"Aye," she said, and he heard the tremor in her words. "All will be well."

* * *

They got food eventually, if you could call the hard, dry bread and sour beer food. Cisco regretted ever complaining, even in his head, about the dullness and sameness of Kathleen’s cooking. At least the cornmeal mush had been hot, and there had been vegetables and herbs to add flavor. And even the occasional rabbit.  


There was a covered pit in the corner of the cell, and when he idly kicked the cover off to figure out what was down there, the smell told him it was the latrine.

There was no bed that he could see.

“So,” he said to Kathleen through the door, “is Josiah a massive dick, or is this how prisons just are?”

“Josiah is a ‘dick,’” she said. He could hear the quotation marks around his slang, and it made him smile a little. “But nay, this is not unusual.”

“So that whole thing about paying a shilling for bedding - he was serious?”

“Aye. I'll none of that. But - I beg your pardon. Perhaps I should have asked for straw for you?”

Cisco looked at the dirt floor, then set his jaw. “No, no way. I’m fine. Save your shillings, girl. We’ll get out of here without a big ol’ debt on your head.”

Still, he pulled his coat around himself and shivered as a cool, rain-smelling breeze snaked in through the window. This was seriously the kind of shit that prisoners brought lawsuits about in the twenty-first century. 

Word must have gotten around town that they had Kathleen Snow and her demon familiar in adjoining cells, because people came to the outside windows to gape. Kathleen called out to all of them, greeting them by name. Their reactions ran the gamut from muttered prayers to shock to downright nastiness.

A few of them were cautiously kind. "I would never have believed it of you, Kathleen," a woman confessed. "But the reverend says - "

"The reverend is mistaken, Charity," she said firmly. "I am no witch."

"He must know a witch when he sees one. He is a man of God."

"And yet still a man, prone to mistake. Martha's illness is of earthly origin, not infernal, and I would never do such a thing."

"What of the demon in the field? He was found in your house, wearing your husband's clothing."

"He is a man like any other," Kathleen said. "A traveler who came to grief, and needed hospitality and care. See for yourself."

"Oh, no, no, no," Charity said, and scurried away.

Not everyone shied away from the sight of the "demon." Cisco felt like a zoo animal, for all the curious faces peering in at him. If he'd been smart enough, or gritty enough, he would have followed Kathleen's lead and talked to them, smiling and charming - just a guy like you! - but he couldn't make himself do it. 

"Kathleen," he said in a quiet moment when nobody was around. "You know this isn't a mistake, right?"

"Of course I do," she said. "But the Miller family is much respected, and 'tis easier to hear 'mistake' than malice."

That was, honestly, a pretty savvy read of the situation. Too bad it didn't sound like people were hearing either.

Near nightfall, someone new came by. "You," said the woman. Cisco usually couldn't see people at Kathleen's window from where he sat, but he got to his feet at the venom in her voice. "Are you happy now? Are you pleased with what you have wrought?"

"Joan," Kathleen said. "Please, you have known me these seven years. I delivered four of your children with these very hands. I would never do such a thing. Please let me see Martha. I may be able to help her."  

"See her? I let you see her two days past, and see what has come of it!"

"That was none of my doing! Why would I?"

"Why would you curse one of my fine, healthy children? You who have none. Why would you not?"

"Nay," Kathleen said, with tears in her voice. "Joan -"

"I should have known there was something unnatural about a woman married near ten years who bore only two live babes, and those two dead so quickly. Did you dispose of your husband in the same way as my Martha?"

Even from his vantage point, Cisco could hear Kathleen's gasp, and he surged forward, chains clanking. "How dare you?" he yelled, grabbing the bars. "What is  _ wrong _ with you?"

Joan jumped back with a choked cry. She should have looked nasty and mean, but she actually looked like a den mom, plump and soft-faced, with greying hair peeking out of her cap. Except for the twisted expression. She stabbed a finger at him. "Are you the creature that taught this witch your foul ways?"

Cisco looked at her coldly. "You're the dumbest woman alive to think Kathleen Snow could ever hurt anyone."

Something flickered in her face, and then she turned her head and spat at Kathleen's window. "There you sit, witch, and there you may rot," she said, and turned away.

Cisco rested his head against the bars and listened to Kathleen's gasping breaths.

"I'm sorry if I made things worse, but that was - that wasn't right."

"That was Martha's mother. She is afraid for her child." Her voice sounded thick and choked-up.

"She doesn't get to say that to you," Cisco said. "Nobody does."

She didn't answer him, and she didn't call out to people at the window anymore.

* * *

The rain came in that night, wet breeze blowing in the window as Cisco huddled into his coat and slept very badly. If Kathleen cried in the next cell, he couldn't hear it over the weather, and she didn't answer when he said her name.  


In the morning, after a brief period of intense traffic just outside their window, the town emptied out completely. It was almost spooky how dead it went. 

"Kathleen?" he said cautiously. She'd barely said a word since Joan Wilkins left the night before. "What's going on?"

"'Tis Sunday," she said. "All are at services in the meetinghouse yonder. Save you and I."

Everyone? Did that mean Josiah too? And if so, did that mean this was their chance to escape?

But the chain was firmly sunk into the wall, the shackles solidly locked, the bars were tight, and the lock so firm he could barely move the door. He tried anyway, struggling until his shoulders ached and there were raw strips around his wrists and ankles. He gave up in defeat, panting. 

Escape was going to have to come a different way.

From the squat log building next to the jail, he could just hear the sounds of a fire-and-brimstone sermon. Probably had a lot to do with the demon and the witch next door, and the peril they posed to the immortal souls of Middleton. 

Every so often, they sang. If you could call it singing; three or four different keys, mumbled words, no tune he could figure. It sounded like funeral dirges. If you asked him, that singing explained a lot about the Puritans.

When he tried to check in with Kathleen, she said softly, "I beg your pardon, Cisco, but I wish not to speak," and he went silent. 

Was it because she wanted to pray, or rest, or whatever? Or was it just because her own neighbors had accused her of a heinous crime and tossed her in jail, and then brought up her dead family in the worst way possible?

He didn't know, but he'd seen Caitlin in this place before. If Kathleen was anything like her, she would talk when she was ready.

His head felt like a balloon filled with pain, and he wished desperately for some willow bark tea. Or Excedrin. Come to that, he wanted a lot of things. 

A hot shower, shampoo and conditioner, shaving cream and his electric razor. He'd used her husband's old straight razor at Kathleen's house, and thought the resulting patchy, uneven shave was the worst it could get. But his beard itched horribly as it grew out, and his hair felt greasy when he pushed it out of his face.

And hey, while he was wishing, he'd take a full-size pizza. He'd even eat one of Caitlin's nasty Hawaiian pizzas, as long as he could eat it with her. A vat of Iris's mac and cheese, the recipe from her grandma. Scrambled eggs with the green corn tamales his mama had made him take home the last time he visited her. A Big Belly combo with Barry. Half a pan, minimum, of Joe's famous lasagna. Or a banh mi from the food truck that parked opposite Jitters on Wednesdays. Oh, god, Jitters. He wanted coffee. Hot chocolate. Chai latte. Anything hot and filling. 

To pass the time, he tried to sleep, and tried not to dream about home. 

* * *

Chatter and footsteps dragged him out of sleep. It was evening now, the air snaking in the window even cooler, with the damp smell of rain. Church had apparently let out, because people streamed past outside. A pair of teenage boys peered in. "Is that the demon?" one of them said. "'Tis not so fearsome. I would teach him a lesson."

He met their eyes and gave a sarcastic wave. They both jumped back with high-pitched squeals, which they pretended hadn't happened as they swaggered away at speed.

Clearly teenage boys were  _ exactly _ the same in the past.

Food smells made his stomach growl hard, but it was at least another hour before Josiah showed up again. He went to Kathleen's cell first, unlocking it with a jingle of keys and a creak of hinges. 

That was odd enough that Cisco came to attention, straining for whatever was going on one cell over.

"May I help you?" Kathleen said icily.

"Martha Wilkins has breathed her last," he announced.

Cisco felt his stomach pitch and roll. One of the things he'd been holding onto was that maybe the girl would pull through, stand up in court, confess that she'd taken the pennyroyal herself, and announce that Kathleen was blameless. 

Okay, it was a thin hope, a telenovela last-minute deus ex machina resolution, but he'd hung onto it. Now it had slipped through his fingers.  

"May God have mercy on her soul," Kathleen said.

"You say that as if God will hear the word of a foul servant to his great enemy."

"I am a God-fearing woman and always have been. You know I am no witch!"

"I know nothing of the kind. You have consorted with the devil, taken that demon next door as your familiar, and cursed Martha Wilkins to death, and you will swing for it, Kathleen Snow." The cell door slammed and the keys jingled as he locked it again.

Cisco was on his feet as his cell door opened, and bared his teeth at Josiah as he edged in. "Get gone, dirtbag."

"You heard that, I daresay," Josiah said. "Will hanging suffice for you, I wonder? Will your infernal master take you back to Hell?"

"Why don't we try it on you?" Cisco suggested.

"I am favored by God, bound for Heaven," Josiah said. "You wouldn't know anything about that."

"I wouldn't be so certain," Cisco said. 

Josiah tried to hit him in the face, but he was a lot clumsier and slower than Martha's dad had been. Cisco ducked, and the only thing that touched him was the edge of the other man's sleeve, brushing across his cheek. 

Much faster and more ruthless, he snatched Josiah's wrist in an iron grip. The other man bleated and pulled at his hand. "Let me go."

He stared hard into those shallow grey eyes and said hoarsely, "I'm not the demon here."

"Release me," Josiah grunted, tugging. 

Cisco dug his fingertips into the other man's wrist as hard as he could. "They're little girls," he said. "You look at them every day, all of them. Poor Martha was almost too old for you. Fifteen, and too old for you. That's fucked up."

The other man's mouth worked for a moment, and then he whispered, "They are no girls, little or otherwise. They are women grown. Their bodies attest to it. 'Tis no sin. God created woman in such form for the pleasure of men's eyes. I cannot but look."

"Ya nasty, man," he hissed, and let him go.

Josiah stumbled back against the wall and rested there, panting, for a second. Then he straightened up, tugging his coat back into position.

"'Tis no sin," he said again.

"Tell yourself that," Cisco said. "And while you're at it, say that to Martha Wilkins."

Josiah turned on his heel. "What care I for a foolish slattern?"


	7. In Which Kathleen and Cisco Are Put on Trial, and an Unexpected Player Enters the Scene

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a long one, and I probably should throw out a CW for seventeenth-century corporal punishment, seriously, what the hell was _wrong_ with these people.

He slid down to the floor, panting, his head hammering like a drum. Maybe he shouldn't have done that. Maybe that would screw them over further.

But the vibe had flooded his mind the instant Josiah's coat had brushed his cheek, pouring out of nowhere, coating his brain with the filth of it. He'd had to let it out, and if it screwed with Josiah Miller even half as much as it had screwed with him, then yippee.

Cisco sat up, sucking in his breath.

He'd vibed. He'd  _ vibed! _

It had been fleeting, if overwhelming. Did that mean his other powers were back too?

He pushed his hands out and tried to blast the tin cup. It stayed firmly, depressingly upright. He shook his hands, shook his shoulders, and tried to open a breach.

This time, instead of the blank nothing that had greeted his senses for the past several days, he felt a faint wisp of power circle around him. Just a tendril, like the smoke from a blown-out candle, but ti was there, and that was a change.

He dropped his hands and whispered " _ Yes!" _ to himself.

Then he sobered.

Even if he could feel the power again, it wasn't enough to pull open a breach. He could tell that much. And even if his breaches started working, he needed to get unchained from this wall first. A breach was no good if he couldn't jump through it. And he needed to get Kathleen out. Because if she got hanged for witchcraft, not only would she be dead, but Caitlin would disappear from history.

The thought grabbed his stomach and twisted it into a knot. No Caitlin?

It would be worse than when she'd died on the table, the first time that Frost had fully arisen. He'd been shaking and sobbing at the thought of her life being cut off, ended before its time.

But that she simply never was? 

He would be mourning for the rest of his life for a woman who had never existed.

He shook himself. No. That wasn't going to happen. He was going to get his powers back. They were going to get unchained - somehow - and escape this prison. He was going to go back to 2018. 

Kathleen was going to have a life and a family and be  _ happy _ . One day three hundred-some years from now, Caitlin Snow would be born, like she was meant to be. 

"Kathleen," he called out.

"Cisco? What happened? What did he say to you? I could not hear."

"No, I'm fine." Skeeved beyond the telling of it, but fine. "Listen, my powers are starting to come back."

Her chains clinked as if she'd jerked in surprise. "Truly? Have your headaches subsided, then?"

"No, but when Josiah touched me, I saw - " He hesitated. How did the Puritans feel about vibes? But it wasn't like he could gloss over this. "I saw a vision. That's one of my other powers, besides the breaching."

She didn't sound surprised or dismayed at all. "Was it a vision of us going free?"

"No, it was about Josiah. It was bad. But the vibes coming back - that's good. That's great. They were the first powers I got, so maybe the others are on their way back too."

"If you still have the headaches, how can we be sure that your other powers will return?"

"They'll subside."

"Will they?"

"They have to." He rubbed his head. They'd been worse than ever over the past two days, probably because of a combination of no painkiller tea and terrible conditions and really truly shitty food. 

They'd been proceeding on the assumption that the headaches were from him hitting his head, and that they'd been blocking his powers somehow. But his vibes were returning, and the headaches were as bad as ever. And that didn't make any sense.

God, his head felt like it was caught in a vice. 

"I really wish I had some of that painkiller tea of yours," he sighed. 

"If I had any to give you, I would."

He froze. His mind clicked back over the past several days, of how his breaches had worked at first and then dissolved, and how they were now coming back. "Kathleen?"

"Aye?"

"The willowbark for the tea - was that all from the field where you found me?"

"Aye," she said. "The finest and healthiest willows in the area.They can withstand far more abuse than strippign a little bark."

"And you use a lot of herbs from there, don't you? And your stream, that you get your water from - does it run through that field first?"

"Aye, it does."

"And you water your garden with it? All those fresh vegetables? You give it to your chickens?"

"Naturally."

He swallowed. "And - and what about this town? Where do they get their water, and their crops?"

"There is a well in the square. 'Twas dug two years ago. Which crops do you mean?"

"The wheat for the bread, the hops for the beer - what we've eaten in here."

"The fields are all around the town, but those most likely come from the north fields. Those are the Millers' allotment."

"Which is on the other side of town from your place."

"Aye. Why these questions?"

He collapsed onto the floor, almost laughing. "I think I know what was blocking my powers, and it wasn't the headaches. It was everything else."

"Do you mean the tea?"

"I mean everything I put in my body, practically. Listen, if there's something about that field that screwed up my powers, it's natural, not man-made." 

He remembered making the dampener cuffs and including an element most often found in meteorites.  _ Space rocks, baybeeee _ , he'd crowed to Caitlin when that test had proved successful. She'd high-fived him back, laughing. 

He refocused on the problem at hand. That big rock in the field had looked like it had a lot of iron. Meteorites were mostly iron. Mostly.

"It seeped into the water, which fed the willows, and we used both to make that tea. And that's not all. One way or another, it was in all the other food and drink I've eaten since I got here. I can't believe I didn't realize that!"

"How does one counteract this?"

He sobered. "I don't. I have to wait for it to - uh. Move through my body."

"Hmmm. If I had but known this, I have laxatives and purgatives and diuretics at home - "

"Gross," he said.

"'Tis no use crying over what can't be helped," she said briskly. "How will you know you have your other powers again?"

"I'll keep working at it," he promised.  


"I shall pray for their speedy return."

If there was a God listening out for Kathleen's prayers, Cisco sent one up too. Please let the judge stay away for awhile. At least long enough for the dampening effects of that field to wear off.

* * *

It didn't rain again overnight, but it was freezing cold. He tucked his hands into his armpits, hunched into his coat and tried to sleep. His head pounded.

In the next cell, Kathleen was whimpering in her sleep. "Kitty," she said. "Kitty, why didst thou do such a thing? Why didst thou lock me away? We have never been parted so long. Why? Kitty, my love, thou needst me, and I need thee. Kitty!"

"Kathleen?" Cisco called out. "Hey. Kathleen, wake up! You're dreaming."

She went silent and then said, "Cisco?"

"You were dreaming," he said, more softly. "I think. Who's Kitty? You were calling out to her."

"I was?"

"Yeah," he said. "You said her name a few times."

There was a soft sniffle. "'Twas a name between myself and my sister."

The one who was gone? The one who'd come to the New World with her, and then had bunked off somewhere? Cisco felt like there must be a hell of a story there, but he didn't know if now was the right time to start digging. And honestly, he was a little afraid to find another pocket of the tragedies that seemed to litter Kathleen's life.

"It's going to be okay," he said. "My powers are going to come back and I'll get us out of here."

"I just wish she were here."

"Are you sure there's no way to contact her?"

There was a long silence, and then she said, "I would have said no, even so recently as this afternoon. But perhaps there is. I will think on it."

"Okay," he said. "You do that. Let's have a backup plan."

Chains clinked on the other side of the wall. "Will you tell me another story from your time? 'Twill help pass the hours."

"What do you want to hear?"

"A story where the heroes win," she said.

He considered. "Okay. I got one for you. It has a princess and a farmboy and a scoundrel."

"It sounds promising already."

* * *

The judge arrived late the following evening, an old white man in a heavy dark coat. He looked well-fed and stern, his horse clopping past the jail without even a pause to look at the people he was going to put on trial.

Cisco had worked on his powers all day, gritting his teeth against the headaches it brought on. He hoped he wasn't overextending himself, shorting things out. He also hoped he wasn't wrong about the willow bark tea. Vibes came irregularly, showing him clusters of things he didn't even understand. But by the evening he was able to control them again. 

No love on his blasts or his breaches, although power swirled just out of his reach, the way it had when he'd tried to show Kathleen a breach in her house that second day. It felt . . . thicker, somehow? Stronger. Like it was coming into focus, if not into reach.

When he rubbed his itchy nose, blood smeared his hand. Swallowing hard, he decided it was time to stop and rest.

Kathleen was quiet most of the day. Thinking about finding her sister, maybe. But when the judge passed the windows, she waited for the crowd to move on and said through the wall, "We will go on trial in the morning, most likely. We must decide what to say about you."

"What about me? I'm a traveler - "

"Yes, yes, yes," she said, "and you told me your tale in such a way that the most credulous child would have been suspicious. You must do better before the judge tomorrow. Let us work on your story."

* * *

In a time without cable TV or the Internet, a trial for witchcraft was probably the best show in town. When they were led out of the jail, across the muddy yard, and into the meetinghouse the next day, he felt the weight of every eye on them.

Cisco wished they'd at least gotten the chance to neaten up. Kathleen looked wan and tired, purple smudges under her eyes, and the braided bun beneath her grubby cap looked like it was about to come undone. From the look on her face, he didn't look much better. 

He felt grimy and gross. Though he had no mirror, he could tell from various past attempts at beard-wearing that his face was in that bad place between scruff and full beard. He probably looked like someone who was about to be accused of robbing a convenience store.

Or convicted of witchcraft.

They were led to chairs and made to sit, the focus of every malevolent eye in the place. 

"We're going to be just fine," he muttered to Kathleen.

"All will be well," she whispered back. 

It had become their mantra to each other. He didn't know how much she believed it. After his morning attempts at breaching and blasting had produced nothing but another nosebleed, his stomach felt like someone had tied it in a half-hitch.

Kathleen had requested to be tried by the judge alone. No jury. Given the nasty looks they were getting, Cisco felt a little better that none of these people - men, he remembered, just men in those times - were going to be on a jury.

So this was all going to be depend on their ability to convince the judge that a) he wasn't a demon and b) Kathleen wasn't a witch. 

Besides Barry's trial last winter and the time Barry had testified with amnesia, he'd only been to court twice in his life, once to contest a traffic ticket and once for jury duty. Court in olden days was just as dull and ceremonious, lots of “oyez oyez” and “let it be known”s.

After all the necessary ceremonies were done with, the judge said, "Will the accused rise and identify herself for the court?"

Kathleen got to her feet. "I am Kathleen Snow, widow of this town."

"I hear tell you have much knowledge of herbs and physick." From the expression on his face, this didn't seem to be a point in Kathleen's favor.

"Aye," she said calmly. "I learned herblore and midwifery at my mother's knee in England, as she learned it from her mother, and she from hers. I consider it my God-given duty to use this knowledge to aid and support my neighbors."

"Hmm. And the man there with you? Can he speak for himself?"

"Yeah, he can." Cisco got up too. "My name is Francis Raymond and I'm from Boston."

There was a general rustling and muttering all over the courtroom, as if they were all surprised that their "demon" had a name and a home. 

"Silence," the judge said. "And are you an Englishman, Francis Raymond?" His eyes swept Cisco up and down, doubt clear in his face.

"I'm Irish," he lied. "I emigrated two years ago."

Kathleen had said that being Irish, while not wonderful, was better than a Spaniard, and apparently she had known Irishmen who looked like him.

Cisco had his doubts that it would fly, and he wasn't happy about erasing his identity, either. But he was pretty sure they wouldn't understand the concept of Latino even if he tried to explain, and if they did, it wouldn't help him any. 

He gritted his teeth and told himself it didn't matter what these racist, misogynist, hidebound twatwaffles got right or wrong about him.

Anyway, if he had to give a fake name, at least he could borrow Ronnie's. It was kind of like having his old friend there with him. 

"Do you claim an honest trade, sir?"

"I'm a tailor." It was the one thing he and Kathleen had been able to think of that he actually knew the first thing about, in case he was questioned. "You got anything needs fixing, I can fix it."

"And your direction?"

"My - ?" But his Spanish came to the rescue -  _ direccion, _ obviously, duh. He gave his real address. "85 Park Street. In Boston." Everywhere had a Park Street, right?

"Where?"

"85 Park?" He barely stopped himself from adding, "Apartment 12," because were apartments a thing here?

"There is no such street in Boston."

"It's new," he said. 

The judge's lips pressed together and he wrote something down. “What is your business in this place?"

“Nothing,” he said. "That is, I never meant to - uh - tarry here. I was traveling to meet a friend in Cambridge and I came to grief on the road. Kathleen took me in, because she’s a good Christian woman like that.”

“Hmmmm,” the judge said. “Be seated.”

The judge called "Thomas Wilkins" first, and the man who'd punched Cisco at Kathleen's house stood. 

"I do accuse this woman," he said, stabbing his finger at Kathleen, "of murdering my daughter Martha by means of witchcraft."

Off to one side, Cisco could see Joan Wilkins, holding a fussy baby, and several more kids seated next to her, from toddlers to early teens. They all looked wrecked, after having seen Martha die what sounded like a pretty horrible death. If he weren't on trial for his life and Kathleen's life and Caitlin's entire existence, Cisco might have felt sorry for them. 

The judge looked unimpressed. "How do you answer to this charge, Widow Snow?"

"I am innocent," Kathleen said. "I have done no wrong. I am truly sorry for your daughter's death, Thomas Wilkins, but 'twas not by my hand."

The courtroom erupted in talk, indignant, surprised. Seriously, though? Had they thought she would cackle and rub her hands in triumph over the death of a teenage girl? 

The judge slammed his gavel. “Silence,” he said. “These are serious charges. What proof have you, Goodman Wilkins?”

Thomas Wilkins testified to Martha coming back from the field a week before, shaking and fearful, and immediately going to see the reverend. Then Kathleen's visit the next night, and how Martha had fallen ill the following morning. His voice shook and thickened as he spoke of his daughter's illness and death. Cisco swallowed, staring at him, thinking,  _ You've got the wrong person. Josiah Miller, that perv, is responsible for all of this. _

In his story, Kathleen had come by to bask in the triumph of her curse and they'd subdued her on the spot. Then they'd gone out to her house and found "that man there, who invoked Hell upon the sight of us. By this and by my poor girl's description of the demon she saw in the field, we seized him as proof of the Snow woman’s foul craft, for surely he was her familiar.”

"And did he come quietly?"

“He fought us mightily. We feared for our souls lest he should get loose.”

_ “What,” _ Cisco said. “I did not! You hit me in the face, you - " He remembered where he was. "Man. And then you punched me in the stomach."

"What?" Kathleen whispered. "You told me nothing of this!"

"I didn't want to worry you," he muttered back.

"Be silent," the judge ordered. "Thomas Wilkins, you may be seated."

Then Reverend Miller got up and testified. Cisco was actually glad he was shackled then, because otherwise he would have gotten up and punched the sanctimonious prick in the nose. He went on and on about Martha, the poor tender child, sobbing and trembling over her brush with Hell in the field.

(Okay, maybe she had been freaked out by his breach, Cisco thought guiltily. It was pretty wild-looking if you weren't used to it, even if you weren't a superstitious Puritan teenage girl.)

But then the Reverend made it sound like Kathleen had cursed at him and Josiah when they'd visited with neighborly concern for her soul, and also that she'd called Martha all kinds of terrible names. He finished up, "That self-same night, I believe, was when the Widow Snow visited the Wilkins house. I dare not think what manner of foul threats she made."

Among mutters and hisses from the crowd, he sat down, mouth curled in a superior smirk. Josiah, next to him, wore the look of a guy who was going to get away with everything. Cisco stared fixedly at the back wall to keep from giving them the filthiest look he could conjure.

The judge asked for any further proof of witchcraft, and a few people stood and told stories about how they'd turned their ankle after Kathleen looked at them in the street, or how their cow stopped giving milk after she'd touched its head. 

It all would have been pretty laughable except for the way Kathleen went paler and paler, her lips flattening into a thin line. These were her  _ neighbors _ , he remembered. Maybe she'd thought of some of them as friends. She'd delivered their babies, doctored their illnesses, maybe even sat at bedsides while people died. And this was what they thought of her?

The judge listened, stone-faced, as one of the teenage boys who'd peered in at Cisco the other night blamed Kathleen for the truly heinous case of acne that peppered his face. "Any others? Widow Snow, what defense can you raise?"

She rose again, stiff and pale. "I am no witch," she said. "I wish harm to none. If any have come to grief after encountering me, I am sorry for it, but 'twas none of my doing." She shot the teenage boy a look. "And Boaz Whitfield, when you came to me with the same complaint a month past, I did advise you to daily wash your face with clear water, and gave you a tincture of willowbark to treat those spots. Which good advice I can well see you have not followed."

The judge spoke over the rush of titters that filled the meetinghouse. "What threats did you make to Martha Wilkins, six night past?"

"None, sir," she said. "My speech with Martha that night was regarding her health."

The reverend snorted, very loudly.

"In what way?" the judge asked.

Kathleen rearranged her clasped hands. "In my errand to gather wild herbs that day, I saw a patch of a particular plant that had been much disturbed."

"Which plant?"

"'Tis an herb meant to treat feminine complaints," Kathleen said, looking down at the floor. "Modesty forbids me from speaking on it further."

A twenty-first century judge would have been on that like a hawk, but this Puritan judge cleared his throat. "Yes. Of course. Proceed."

"I knew from the Millers' visit that Martha had been to that field, and I worried lest she attempt to doctor herself. I knew that plant in England, but the strain that grows here is different. Stronger." 

"That's nonsense," Joan Wilkins said loudly. The baby at her shoulder jerked awake and made those gearing-up-to-cry noises that unhappy babies made.  "If Martha had any complaint of that kind, she would have told her mother."

Kathleen said, "I thought perhaps she did not like to trouble you, as little Ezra has been so bad with the colic these months past."

Joan went red and held her baby tighter. "Keep my child's name out of your mouth, witch!"

The baby didn't like that squeezing business at all, and let out a shriek that even made his mother flinch. She loosened her hold, shushing him and patting his back, glaring at Kathleen the whole time. The rest of the courtroom muttered and whispered to each other.

Kathleen lifted her chin, looking back at the judge. "I fear that in spite of my cautions to her, Martha dosed herself too powerfully with this herb. I have seen poisonings of this kind before. 'Tis unfortunately easy to do if one is unwary."

"So you admit what you have done, witch," the Reverend shouted out. "You took this herb to the Wilkins house and poisoned her yourself." 

"I would never do such a thing. Poor Martha made a terrible mistake, one I warned her against. I mourn for her death, and for your suffering, Thomas and Joan."

The mutters in in the courtroom grew louder, and took a nasty edge. The judge hammered his gavel again. "What was this man doing in your house?"

"Recovering from misadventure. I discovered him lying unconscious a few days ago, dirty and much hurt. It seemed to me that he had been assaulted or had an accident upon the road, and needed care."

"Where did you discover him?"

"A little off the main road."

"When?"

"This Wednesday past."

"So he was there when we visited?" the Reverend shouted out. "And yet you said nothing of it. No wonder you were so angry that we were there. What was it you wished to hide?"

"Naught," she flashed back. "Did you not hear me say he needed to recover? I would not have you disturbing my patient."

"Did it not occur to you, woman, that he might be the self-same creature that Martha Wilkins saw in the field?"

"Nay, for the simplest examination informed me that he was a man like any other."

Whispers filled the room again. Cisco kept his head up.

"He looks well-recovered now," Josiah said, a certain insinuation in his tone.

"Aye, no thanks to conditions in your jail, Josiah Miller," Kathleen snapped.

"Okay," Cisco muttered. "Okay, chill. Relax."

"Be seated, Widow Snow," the judge said. "Francis Raymond, on your feet."

Cisco got up, trying to look cool and composed. Or maybe he shouldn't. After all, he was just a regular seventeenth-century dude, called before a court on ridiculous charges. Maybe he should look more annoyed.

Stick as close to the truth as possible. Let it ring in your voice. Lie only when necessary.

"How do you answer the charges of the Wilkins girl?"

"I don't know what she saw," he said. "I'm just a guy - a man. I'm no demon, I don't have any evil powers. I was traveling and I came to grief and that's all."

"What happened to you?"

"I don't really know," he said. "I hit my head somehow and lost my senses and Ka- Goodwife Snow, because she's a good Christian woman, took me in."

"Traveling for what purpose?"

"I was on my way to meet a friend, so we could go back home together."

"To Boston?"

"Yeah, to Boston." He heard the snarkiness in his own voice and swallowed. "Sir."

"Can any respectable men vouch for you in that town, Francis Raymond?"

Wait, what? Oh, shit. "Yeah, of course," Cisco said, mind scrambling. "The, uh, the Revere family."

"Who?"

"They're silversmiths, " He swallowed. "Well, it's a big city, so you may not - "

"I make my home in Boston," the judge said. "'Tis sizeable, but not yet four thousand souls, and few of them silversmiths. None of whom are named Revere."

Oh, shit. "Well, the Franklins know me. They're good people."

"Who?"

Why hadn't he said he was from Philly? Or New York? He could have claimed to know the Hamiltons - no, wait, Alexander Hamilton wouldn't be born for like eighty years, not to mention he had been born in the Caribbean, a nothing-nobody -  _ how does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore -  _

The judge's voice cut into his brain spins. "Who is our governor? Know you his name?"

"His - wha - " He looked over at Kathleen, who had her head propped on her hand and was mouthing something at him under the shield of her arm. What was she saying? He took a wild guess. Everybody was named the same damn thing in these days anyway. "Thomas . . . uh . . . "

"Richard," the judge said. "Richard Bellingham."

Cisco felt his stomach drop. "Well," he said. "Like I said. I haven't been around that long. Don't pay attention to politics, honestly. But, sir, I'm no demon, just like Ka- Goodwife Snow is no witch. I don't know how else to say it."

"And yet you invoked Hell upon being captured."

Cisco still couldn't wrap his mind around it. He hadn't gotten so much as a swat with a chancla for the word  _hell_ since the ninth grade. "I wasn't invoking anything," he said. "Yes, it was foul language and I shouldn't have said it, but I was surprised and angry, because they were making a huge mess of her house."

The judge narrowed his eyes. Cisco clenched and relaxed his sweaty hands behind his back. 

"You do seem to be a man in truth," the judge said. "A creature of Hell would be a much better liar. You seem to me little but a rogue, a vagrant, and an adventurer."

That all sounded . . . not so bad to Cisco. Honestly, it made a pretty decent D&D character. But the way the judge said it, it sounded like  _ hood-rat trash _ . 

"And yet blasphemy is a serious charge."

"Sir," he said. "I'm very sorry and I'll pay any fine or whatever that you want. I'm just a man, who was traveling and got in trouble, and I really just want to go home."

The judge hmmed to himself, wrote something else down, and studied him for a long moment. Cisco shifted, the chains around his ankles clinking. 

The judge slammed his gavel. "For vagrancy and blasphemy, I sentence the man Francis Raymond to a day in the stocks. Upon his release, he will be branded with a hot iron upon the hand with a B for Blasphemer and removed from this town." The judge glared down at him. "And mind you do not step foot in it again, on pain of death."

Good. Great. He was out of here as soon as possible. He wouldn't even wait around for the branding. 

"Kathleen Snow, on your feet."

She rose. 

"The widow Kathleen Snow, by the testament before this court, has committed many and varied offenses of witchcraft, most heinous among them the murder of the girl Martha Wilkins."

Cisco went rigid. There was a roaring in his ears.

"For these sins against God and man, she is to be hanged by the neck until dead." The judge slammed his gavel again. "Both these sentences are to be carried out immediately."

"What?" Cisco shouted.

The judge glared at him. "Do you protest the judgement of this court?"

"No, you just - you can't  _ hang _ her! She's innocent! What proof do you have? You have nothing! Hearsay, a-and prejudice, and - Kathleen!" He looked around wildly. Everyone watching was muttering or talking between themselves, eyes hard.

She stood stock still, all the color drained from her face, her eyes huge with horror and fear. "I can only say that I did not kill Martha Wilkins, and I have never practiced witchcraft. Before Almighty God, on my soul, I swear it."

"Listen to her. Why would she? If you want someone to blame, why don't you ask Josiah Miller over there what happened to Martha and why?"

It was like he'd lobbed a bomb. The meetinghouse erupted in shouting, and the judge bellowed, "One  _ week _ in the stocks and his tongue to be bored through with a hot iron for speaking falsehood against a man of respectable character in a court of law! Take them out, now!"

Cisco lunged forward - even he didn't know what he was going to do. But in an instant, half the men in Middleton had swarmed him, hard hands tight around his arms and then his legs as they lifted him off the ground, carrying him bodily out of the meetinghouse. 

He punched and thrashed and kicked, trying to use the weight of the chains at his ankles and wrists against his captors, but he could get no leverage or momentum. He swore in two languages, screaming Kathleen's name. 

The mid-afternoon sun burned down into his eyes, and he jerked his head away. He was dropped hard on the ground, and it momentarily knocked him senseless. When his vision cleared and his head stopped ringing, he was being put into a wooden frame, a merciless hand on his neck keeping his head down, more hands holding his wrists in place. His ankles were already locked in place. The chains he'd worn were in a heap on the ground.

He squirmed and twisted, trying to rip out of their grasp. The top of the frame slammed down and a lock clicked shut, but he kept fighting, shouting, hands splaying wide, feet kicking as much as he could 

The men around him jumped back. "He has run mad," one said. "Like a rabid dog."  


"It could be he is under her influence. Let the witch die, and perhaps he shall grow docile. And if not, we shall hang him too." 

"No!" Cisco bellowed. "No! NO!  _ NO!" _

The only voice that could have made it through his panic rang out. "Cisco! Stop!"

He went still, panting hard. 

The stocks were set up next to a big old tree - oak, or something, with thick, twisted branches. There was a ladder propped on the trunk, and a noose dangled from one of the branches.

Kathleen stood at the base of the ladder, Josiah Miller holding onto her arms so tight his fingers dug into her sleeves. She ignored him, focused on Cisco. "Please," she said. "You will hurt yourself."

She was right. The stocks held him tight. Even if he could blast, he had no way of bracing himself against the backlash, and he would probably dislocate every joint he had.

"Let me go, Josiah Miller," she said to the man holding her. "I shan't run." 

"Kathleen, this is not okay," he said, hearing his voice crack.

She met his eyes, and amazingly, she smiled. "Have faith," she said. "All will be will."

"No," he breathed, watching her turn to the ladder and take her first step up on it.

Not only was Kathleen going to die, Caitlin would disappear from history.

"No!" he shouted. "No! Kathleen! Caitlin! Kathleen! Don't do this, let her go, she doesn't deserve this!"

The noose looped over her head. She shut her eyes, mouthing something he couldn't make out.

It all seemed to happen in blinks like a series of pictures.

Josiah's foot, kicking the ladder out from under her. 

Her body dropping.

Her skirts swirling around her thrashing feet. 

The horrible choking noises from her throat. 

Her body falling limp.

The ugly cheer from the watching crowd.

And then - 

The cloudy breath escaping her lips.

The white spiraling down her braid.


	8. In Which Cisco Meets Kathleen's Sister and Effects an Escape from the Seventeenth Century

The temperature plunged. A cold wind blasted out, shattering several of the tree's branches into matchsticks. The crowd screamed, scrambling away.

When the billowing mist cleared, Killer Frost stood on the ground, the hangman's swinging loosely from her neck, eyes glowing white.

"I do hear tell thou seekest demons," she said in a voice like an Arctic wind. "I am come to answer that call. Hast thou never heard the saying, be careful of thy wishes?" She smiled coldly. "Behold, thou hast received."

"Back!" the reverend screamed, holding a Bible in front of him like a shield. "Back to Hell with you, fiend!"

She pulled the rope off over her head and whipped it at him, and he had to scramble to avoid it.

 _"Thee,"_ she said. "Thou standest there in all thy piety, thou whited sepulchre. Thee, who sought to kill an innocent woman to hide the doings of thy loathsome son."

Josiah had been knocked backwards and lay full-length on the ground, whimpering. She stalked over to him, skirts swirling, and planted one foot on his stomach, holding him in place.

"Thou didst never seek to teach him right from wrong, only the appearance of such. Well, I shall devise a punishment to fit the crime, since thou wilt not."

She bent over and spread her hand wide. Mist gathered around her hand, then blasted out toward Josiah's groin.

He screamed.

The crowd screamed.

Cisco cringed.

"I think he shall not be using that for some time," she said, straightening up. "Or perhaps ever again. Frostbite is so very painful, is it not?"

Josiah sobbed on the ground, thin, high-pitched noises. Remembering what he'd seen in the vibe, Cisco couldn't really bring himself to feel any pity.

She gave him a little kick and stepped over his body to walk to the stocks and pick up the heavy iron lock that held them fast. "Now," she said. "Who is going to bring me the keys?"

For a moment, nobody moved. Then there was a scuffle and a struggle in the crowd, and a girl squirmed out into the clear area before the hanging tree. She looked about twelve or thirteen, with dark hair frizzing off the long braid that hung down her back. She lifted her chin, looking squarely up into the glowing white eyes.

Killer Frost looked back at her.

Cisco waited for the girl to spit defiance, to call her a demon, to damn her to Hell. But instead, she said, in a light, clear voice, "Is it true he will never use it again?"

Frost's dark blue mouth twisted in a smirk. "We can but hope, poppet."

The girl turned her head to look at Josiah Winters, and smiled with all her teeth. "Good." She held out a ring of keys.

Frost took it and unlocked the stocks, lifting them away from Cisco's neck and wrists first. He straightened up, aching everywhere, and helped her lift up the middle section that would free his feet. She helped him up, sliding her arm under his back. This close, cold rolled off her like an air conditioner.

"How be thee?" she asked quietly. "Frighted? Thou art safe, my word on it."

"Been better," he said.

“Aye,” she said. “And so hath Kitty.” She held her hand out flat and smiled as a knife of ice grew out from her palm, glittering in the sunlight. She gripped it tight and turned to face the crowd again. “How shall I take my vengeance?”

"Have mercy," someone wailed, and Joan Wilkins fell to her knees.

Frost's lip curled up. "Mercy? Mercy, is it." She stabbed the air. “That for your mercy!”

Joan sobbed.

"When sweet Kitty begged thee for mercy, with these very hands uplifted to thee, didst thou show her such? Nay! Thou didst flay her with vicious words and taunt her with her own dead children! What manner of fool expects mercy after such like behavior?"

She swept her glowing gaze across the assembled crowd. They shrank back, clutching each other, mumbling prayers. The girl who had given her the keys still stood by the hanging tree, watching.

"Fools, all of thee," she said. "Idiot bumpkins in thy roast-meat clothes, come to see thy neighbor die. Dost thou call _this_ thy city on a hill? Not a one of thee has the wit of the fartleberries that hang from thy fundament, and 'twould serve thee well if I froze this whole town where it stands."

Cisco said into the tense silence, "But Kitty wouldn't like it. And you know that."

She sighed and let her hand drop. "Nay. She would not. For her sake, then, I will leave thee be, with the memory of what thou did to sustain thee."

He let out his breath in a whoosh. Josiah Miller was still whimpering on the ground, and Joan Wilkins was huddled in her husband’s arms.

He didn’t think she really would have frozen them all, especially after the way she’d spoken to the girl.

Well. Not really.

She said to him, "Kitty says thou thinkest thou hast thy powers back." She flexed her fingers and the ice knife grew into something more like a machete. "I am well pleased to cut our way out if need be."

"I don't think need be," he said, "but keep that handy." Holding her elbow with one hand, he pushed his other hand out hard, focusing on Kathleen's little house, praying that he'd been right about the willow-bark tea -

And the power poured through him in a flash flood, roaring out to tear a breach in the air. Through the swirl, he could just sense the small, familiar cottage, dirt floors and wooden rafters and reed thatch.

The townspeople screamed again, clinging to each other. Frost grinned widely.

"Yep," Cisco said, panting in relief. "That's our ride. Come on!" He tugged at her arm.

She paused long enough to brandish her ice machete and shout, "Think not to follow us, fools, for we go to hell in search of kinder neighbors!" She jumped after him, landing on her feet in the middle of Kathleen's house.

The breach whooshed closed.

She panted for breath. "Well," she said, walking over to drop her ice machete into the bucket by the door. "That was _very_ dramatic."

"Says the woman who told a whole town that we were going to hell," he said, staring at her.

She shrugged. "Kitty is always so sweet. And mayhaps 'twill delay them looking for us." She brushed her hair behind her ear. "She telleth me she meant not to trap me and silence me. That 'twas the effect of the herbs and flowers she took from the field yonder."

"I think so," he said.

"Ah, Kitty," she sighed, pressing her hand to her heart. "I take back my anger, dear one. I thought 'twas those self-righteous fools, convincing thee I was a demon."

"She can talk to you? You can talk to each other?"

"Not for many a year now," she said. "But throughout our childhood, aye, we were constant companions in our thoughts. She hath been very lonely without me, I think. Poor love. Her husband, her children, and me. 'Tis too much loss for the human heart."

He stared at her. "You . . . you love her."

"As she loves me," she said. "Why should I not?"

"I don't know," he said, remembering that Killer Frost had once begged Barry not to let Caity die.

Caity, and Kathleen was Kitty to the Frost in front of him. A loving, sisterly nickname.

She reached out and gripped the mantel, as if she were trying to keep herself upright.

He took a quick step toward her. "Are you okay?"

"Merely weary. God above. That was a great deal of power and I have spent many a year asleep." She gave him a crooked little smile, like the Killer Frost of 2018. "Well met, Cisco Ramon, and my thanks. Kitty would like to speak to thee now."

"Okay, sure," he said. "Bye."

She blinked a few times, and then her eyes were brown, and dark brown spilled down the white of her hair like ink. It was unmistakably Kathleen again. "So," she said, letting go of the mantel and giving him the same kind of tight, nervous smile that Caitlin had once given him before freezing a glass of water solid. "You have met my sister."

He took two steps towards her and pulled her into his arms, hugging her tight. " _Kathleen,_ " he said. "Oh my god. I thought you were dead. I thought - "

She went stiff in surprise, and then rested against him a moment before easing back. He let her go. "I am well," she said. "As you see. But - " She stared at him. "You were not frightened."

"Didn't you hear me? I was scared out of my mind!"

"I did hear you," she said. "But the Frost can be a fearsome and startling sight the first time. Yet you looked overjoyed."

"You saw me?"

"I can see all that the Frost does, as she always could see all that I did." She crossed her arms. “You avoid the question, Cisco.”

"I - " He scratched his brow. "I guess I should confess this isn't the first time I've seen her. Or something - someone - like her."

Her eyes went big. "Do you mean you know a woman in your time with a Frost? Like mine?"

He nodded. "Actually, it's my friend. Caitlin."

Kathleen reached out and grabbed the mantelpiece again.

Cisco shuffled his feet. This was the first time Caitlin's name had come up between them since the morning before they'd both gotten arrested. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you before. I felt kind of awkward about it."

"She is my descendant, then, " Kathleen said. "If she has the Frost. My daughter’s daughter, times many.”

"Six, I think?" he said. "Maybe seven. I'm not sure. So - Frost. Is inherited?"

She pressed her fingers to her lips. "It passes from mother to daughter in my family," she said. "Not every mother, and most certainly not every daughter. But the Frost wakes in us in childhood, and stays by our side all our lives." She looked sad. "Until me."

Cisco used his foot to nudge some of the willow bark scattered all over the floor. "Right," he said softly. "It blocked my powers, so it blocked yours too."

"I used herbs from that field, and water from the stream, from the day we began to build our house. Her voice faded and disappeared, and I knew not why." She blinked a few times and heaved a breath. "I thought perhaps she did not flourish in the New World. David feared for a time that without her, I should not flourish neither."

"He knew?"

"He was the man I loved best in the world. Of course he knew, the same as my father knew before he wed my mother." She gave him a crooked smile. "But you see why I never spoke of the Frost to my neighbors in this place."

"Is that also why you built so far out here?"

"In part. David wished to keep me safe. When we came here, I was young, and still suffering the loss of Molly, and missing my family. Sometimes on the journey, my Frost emerged in response to my sorrow or my anger." She looked around. "But I did love this spot so very dearly."

"You know you can't stay here," he said as gently as he could. “They won’t let you. You see what they did to your house?”

She looked around at the herbs torn off the walls, at the splintered spinning wheel and the tangled yarn and the tossed furniture. She sniffed hard. "Nay," she said. "I cannot.”

She shut her eyes for a moment, breathing in, and then opened them. "She wishes to emerge again, to spare me the pain of packing up, but I have told her no. I would not give up that pain for worlds."

* * *

The townspeople hadn’t made as much of a mess in the other room, and somehow, they’d skipped opening the chest where his clothes were folded and packed down in the bottom. Maybe Cisco had distracted them. It was too large and heavy for Kathleen to carry on the road, so she pulled out a blanket that hadn’t gotten singed in the fireplace and started sorting through her things.

He offered to help, but she said, “I would rather you did not,” in a way that reminded him of Caitlin, cleaning Ronnie’s things out three months after the explosion. She’d refused his help too.

At the time, he’d thought she just wanted privacy to cry, but now he thought of the way Kathleen had said she wouldn't give up that pain, and wondered if that was totally accurate.

He took his things to the front room and started peeling off his seventeenth-century clothes. He wrinkled his nose as he got a whiff of himself. Not to put too fine a point on it, he stank.

But did he really want to wash with the water from the stream, with its powers-suppressing properties? Was that a risk he was willing to take?

“Duh,” he said aloud.

Frost’s ice machete sat melting gently in the bucket. That was as pure as water could get, distilled from the humidity in the air.

Obviously it was freezing cold, though. He danced and swore and might have squealed when he washed certain sensitive areas. But he felt much cleaner, even if he didn’t have time to wash his hair or shave his beard.

He put his 21st century clothes on. It had only been a few days, but they felt strange on his body - the pants too long, the socks too short, the t-shirt too close-fitting. He tied his shoes and shook out his shoulders.

Kathleen knocked at the door between the rooms, and he said, “It’s okay, I’m decent.”

She came through, a bundle tied like a backpack over her shoulders. She had changed clothes, too. She stopped short. “I had forgot how odd your clothing was.”

“It feels odd,” he said.

She looked suddenly stern. "Let me see those wrists."

He held them out, and she tutted over the raw welts from the chains and the stocks. "I told you that you would hurt yourself. At least you had the wit to wash them well." She found some bandages that had survived and wrapped them up while he smiled at the top of her head.

“You want to wash or anything? There's still some meltwater there."

"Frost distilled some water for us to wash with. I am clean enough to leave here. I only wish to find a few things." She moved around the front room, her face scrunching with pain when she found the tangle of wool that she'd worked so hard to spin, or a pan she wouldn't be able to carry. She opened her bundle a few times to tuck things inside - her knitting needles, a bundle of herbs that had escaped the flames.

Suddenly she gave a small cry. "My book! My book." She clasped it to her heart. "Praise God they did not burn it."

"Your Bible?"

"Nay, I have that. They would never burn a Bible." She touched the cover tenderly. "My journal. It had fallen down behind the shelf somehow, and they missed it. Surely by the grace of God."

"You got that from your mother, right?"

"All I have left of her."

"I'm glad."

She hugged it again and then tenderly put it away, tying the bundle. "Very well. I am ready to leave."

"Where do you want to go?"

"Boston?" She looked lost, her eyes big.

"That's going to be too close," he said. "And the judge lives there. What about New - um. New Amsterdam?"

"Do you mean New York? 'Tis an English city now, for near ten years." She looked interested. "Do the Dutch take it back, then?"

"No, it's New York City in my time. Okay. The Big Apple it is." He started to put his hand out, and she touched his arm.

“Cisco Ramon,” she said.

“Kathleen Snow,” he said back.

"It has been a blessing," she said. "Having you here."

"Sure," he said. "What woman doesn't want a strange guy landing on her doorstep, having to guide him around like a puppy, and then almost getting her hanged for witchcraft and have to run away from her home? I bet women pray for that all the time."

Not to mention calling her Caitlin's name in bed. He didn't want to bring that up, mostly because he was still thinking about it himself.

She smiled at him. "You did do all that. But you also gave me companionship, and laughter, and tales of wonders, and you spoke to me as an equal. And you gave me a gift beyond measure. The tale of your friend, who has the Frost in her veins."

"Caitlin? I mean, I guess it's kind of neat, knowing that you'll have descendants - "

"Before you came, I was convinced in my heart that my life was done. I had suffered too much, I could not suffer any more. Without David, without my children, without my sister, I would simply wither away in my little house until one day I breathed no more. But I have my Frost back, and together we can withstand anything."

"That's great," he said.

She shook her head, smiling, as if he still wasn't getting it. "Your tale has told me for certain that I will live. And that I will love again. And that I will have a child. A daughter. At least one who will live to adulthood, long enough to have her own daughter. The Frost will live on, until she reaches your friend."

He suddenly thought of something. "Do me a favor," he said.

"Whatever you like."

"Write it all down. Everything you know about your sister, everything your mother ever told you, every tiny scrap of information you can dredge up. Then put it somewhere safe. Harvard," he said impulsively. "Give it to them."

Her brows went up. "It trains ministers. What use would it have for the writings of a midwife?"

"That's up to you," he said. "But it'll be around in my time, and I know for sure that my Caitlin never got the information passed down to her."

"What, never? But she has the Frost."

He looked down, ashamed. "Yeah, but she thought it was a curse. Like. A demonic possession. Something she needed to fight against." He bit his lip. "We all did."

Kathleen pressed her hand to her heart. "Poor girl. That is a terrible way to live with your closest companion."

"This will help, I hope. You'll do it, though?"

"I promise," she said.

"Good. Okay. Here we go. Don't freak out."

For the second time in a week, he stood in the small thatched cottage with Kathleen Snow watching him, thought hard of a location, and opened a breach.

This time it blossomed like a flower, the air tearing open, the familiar whirl of the edges brushing the floor and ceiling.

"Oh," she breathed.

"Yeah," he said. "C'mon, quick!" He held out his hand and she grabbed it, and they leapt through.

He'd focused on the old church cemetery close to the 9/11 memorial, the oldest thing he could remember from his trip there a couple of years before. But they landed on the edge of a boggy shoreline, and he had to yank Kathleen back before she fell in.

"Sorry," he said. "I think maybe I'm in the wrong - "

She pointed and he turned to see a few small houses, and a dusty road leading up to a wooden wall about a story high. Behind it, he could just see more buildings. "Is that it?" he said. "How do you know?"

"David and I spoke of coming here after the English captured it," she said. "The Dutch built that wall to keep the natives out. We are just outside of it, I think. I shall walk in and make my way."

"You sure you want me to drop you here?"

She smiled and held out her hand. Her eyes glowed white for a moment, and an ice knife grew. "I think we shall be fine, Cisco Ramon," Frost's voice said. Then she blinked and they were brown again.

"Okay," he said and found he had to swallow a thick feeling in his throat. "Good luck. It was - it was really amazing meeting you."

She smiled at him, and without saying anything, she took a step forward and kissed him. Just a brief whisper, a press of the lips, a fleeting sensation of warmth, and then it was gone and she stepped back. "Fare thee well," she said. "I shall never forget you."

"Me neither," he said, and watched her walk toward the gate in the wall until she was little more than a speck.

Then he pulled open another breach and jumped back to her house. It seemed more forlorn than ever, intensely empty and abandoned.

He checked for his wallet and phone, and looked around to make sure he hadn't accidentally left a twenty-first century sock with anachronistic elastic lying around. But both socks were on his feet. He went out the front door and closed it behind him.

The cow and the chickens had escaped while they are in prison, the fence knocked down and her garden trampled. He was briefly glad she wasn't there to see that. He glanced down the path toward Middleton, but saw no furious townspeople.

All the same, he jogged briskly in the other direction, toward the field.

He studied the big rock for a moment. Was it really the same one? Really?

Only one way to find out.

Shutting his eyes, he focused on where he wanted to go. And when. Carefully, he pushed his hand out. As carefully as the very first breach he'd ever cut, but with more intention for the other end.

It peeled open softly, almost gently. The edges were whiter. Barely even a hint of violet, when it was usually purple and white.

And through it, he could see the same field he stood in now. But the trees were bigger, the grass evenly mown, and in the distance, he caught a glimpse of a car through the tree trunks.

Home.

His throat choked with sudden panic. How did he know if he was going back to the right time? Just because he saw cars in the distance? It could be 1972, not 2018.

He took a breath and jumped through.


	9. In Which Cisco Returns to the Twenty-First Century, Much Affected By His Misadventure, and Caitlin Solves a Minor Though Pressing Medical Conundrum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finished this chapter very quickly compared to uhhhhh . . . my last three. So lucky you, you're getting it today! I'm really hoping to have the last chapter pulled into shape by Friday. Cross your fingers.

The breach took longer than usual - less like a portal and more like a tunnel that spit him out on the other side, crashing and rolling to the grass. At least he hadn't blacked out this time. Wincing, he pushed himself to his feet and looked around. 

It  _ looked _ the same as it had when he'd left the twenty-first century. But grass and trees pretty much looked the same anywhen, as he could now attest for himself. He took a few unsteady steps toward the road, until he could get a better look at the cars. 

The ones he could see were all late-model, so he was within a decade or so of the right time period. Now if only he could be sure he hadn't changed the future into unrecognizability.

He poked at his dead phone, vaguely hoping that time travel might have magical phone-battery-restoring powers. It didn't. He tucked it back in his pocket and started walking, instinctively heading in the opposite direction from the spot where Middleton had been.

Destroyed in the fighting between colonists and Native Americans, three years later, he remembered, and smirked. 

Maybe nobody had outright cursed Middleton, but they'd gotten what they deserved all the same.

He hoped the girl who'd given Frost the keys had at least survived. He hoped her family hadn't made her suffer for that, or that the town hadn't, or -

He cut himself off. He could vibe on her later. It was a long shot, but he might be able to see her future. In the past. Oh Jesus. He was over three hundred years away from something that had happened to him an hour ago.

He walked through a little downtown area with stores and brands he recognized. Stickers in the windows advertised free wifi, find us on Facebook, download our app! So he hadn't killed the Internet.

He felt disoriented, almost dizzy. On the one hand, his surroundings were familiar. Cars and stores and telephone poles, the trappings of his world. But after a week in the past, it all felt loud and busy and just a little off-center.

Or was he getting that feeling for some other reason? 

He needed to figure out how long he'd been gone, and what he'd changed about the timeline.  

A stately old building on a corner had a sign announcing it to be the Witchfield Public Library. Okay. Libraries were a thing. That was good. Whatever butterflies he'd stepped on in the past, it hadn't killed the institution of the public library. With any luck, it still worked the same way, too.

He walked in, and the first thing he saw was a signboard, listing the day's events. Storytime, a lecture on urban gardening, a citizenship class, Read to a Dog, a teen D&D club. And there, at the top - the date.

August 29, 2018.

The day he'd left.

He closed his eyes, feeling the world shift and tilt around him.

"Sir?" said a voice.

He opened his eyes and found a librarian standing in front of him, her forehead crinkled with concern. "Are you okay?" she asked. 

He had to swallow twice. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I'm fine. Except, uh, my phone is dead. And I'm not from around here. And I really need to get in touch with a friend."

"You can use the phone at the desk."

"I don't have her number memorized," he admitted. "Do you maybe have a charger I could borrow?" He held out his phone, wondering if she was going to yelp that nobody had ever made a phone like this and - 

"Well, we've got one in lost and found you can use, but it doesn't have a wall adapter. I'll have to sign you into a computer so you can plug into the USB."

"I would love a computer. Thank you."

She put him on as a guest, next to a kid playing Roblox and an old lady chatting on Facebook. While it got logged on, he sat taking it all in, the electric lights, the shelves and shelves of books, the  _ technology. _

The woman in the romance section with spiky blue hair the same color as her tight jeans, the two old ladies holding hands in the magazine area, the guy across the row with a ring in his eyebrow, somebody talking a little too loudly on their cell phone in what sounded like Chinese. 

He wished Kathleen could see this.

He hit Google. The Flash still existed. Iris's blog was still up, with an entry about last night's (only last night?) mayhem. He trawled back through the archives and found an entry featuring Frost, from before DeVoe had taken her away.

Everything was still the same.

The librarian who'd gotten him onto the computer walked past him on her way back to the desk. He caught her eye and she stopped. "Yes? Did you get ahold of your friend?"

"It's still charging," he said. "Battery was way dead. Hey, uh, do you have a local history section? Or local geology, or something."

"At this branch? Not much. Most of it's downtown at Main. But what do you want to know?"

"The field - I mean, the park. Back there? About three blocks?"

"Witchfield Park."

"I guess. Do you know if there's anything special about any of the rocks there?"

"Well, a lot of them are meteorites. MIT comes out here regularly to test. The smallest chunks are barely pebbles, the biggest one is - "

"A big flat rock, right? With a pointy end?"

"Right. The theory is a meteoroid broke up low enough in the atmosphere to scatter over a pretty small area."

He'd been right. "Thanks," he said. "I was just curious." 

Someone called her over to help them on the computer - "Should I click here?" "Where it says click here, yes." - and Cisco sat thinking about meteorites, and the way his powers had sputtered and warped.

He went back to Google and typed in  _ Kathleen Snow.  _ His finger hovered over the mouse button for several moments. 

Did he want to know?

Before he could decide, his phone burbled, turning on. He went still, watching it, waiting for it to catch a signal. This was still his phone, right? He did still exist. He had to. Iris had mentioned Vibe in the post.

Unless Vibe was someone else now - 

His phone finished its booting cycle, searched briefly for a signal, and then lit with a text, with Caitlin's name at the top.

_ Are you done? Come back and meet me. You're never going to believe what I found out at the lecture on my ancestor's diary _

He let out his breath in a long sigh and picked up the phone. The text was only about ten minutes old, maybe from when he'd been standing at a crosswalk watching a truck roar by.

_ Actually I might, _ he wrote back.  _ Where are you? _

* * *

When Caitlin had walked into the restaurant, she'd asked for a sidewalk table. Not because the tables out there were charming and intimate and a little romantic, with their cut-glass tealight centerpieces. Just because it was nice out. Of course.

Once she'd gotten settled in, asked for water, and glanced at the menu, she texted Cisco the address. She added a picture of an alley she'd taken along the way, to make it easier for him to breach into a secluded spot. He'd asked her to order for him, so she asked for two house specials, which was clam chowder in a crusty bread bowl. She saw it being carried out to another table, blinked at the size of the bowls, and texted him, _I_ _ hope you're hungry _

Without waiting for his answer, she tucked her phone in her pocket and kept turning the pages of the spiral-bound booklet she'd gotten at the lecture. It was her ancestor's diary. 

Not the real one, of course. That was in a special collection. But for the lecture, Professor Turnbull had reprinted it from digital scans, along with some additional back matter like parish records from London and New York City.  

But still, it was like the past reaching out and touching her, Kathleen's words in her own handwriting with the typed-up transcription on the facing pages, and the occasional sketch.

She flipped to something the scholars called "the fanciful section" and then paused. She'd burst into tears in the lecture when she'd first realized what it was saying, and while half that reaction had been surprise, she didn't know if she was steady enough to re-read it in public.

So she turned the pages firmly. She would read it again at home, and think over what it meant. 

Cisco wasn't going to  _ believe  _ this.

She turned to a page that had stopped her dead the first time she'd seen it, and gazed down into the face of the man Kathleen had only called the Traveler.

He smiled out at her, long dark hair curling to his shoulders and shadowing on his jaw as if a beard was growing out. It was a pencil sketch, so skin tone was hard to pinpoint, but some cross-hatching made it seem darker than a pale Englishman's. His dark eyes glinted with humor. You just wanted to smile back at him.

The theories about the Traveler mostly agreed that he was a Native American man, possibly mixed native and English, or native and French, and that he probably came from a local tribe like the Wampanoag or Massachusett. Someone had theorized that he came from a tribe much further south, possibly as far south as Florida or Mexico. But they were ignored in that special academic  _ what-an-intriguing-theory _ kind of way.

Caitlin had sat there thinking,  _ There's no way that's Cisco _ . But she kept staring at it. The way she was now. 

"Hey," Cisco said from the sidewalk.

"Hey," she said, looking up, and then she shrieked.

He jumped, and the diners around her jumped, and her waiter hurried over, scowling at Cisco. "Sir, I'll have to ask you to - "

"No!" Caitlin said. "No, it's fine, he's my friend, he's joining me for dinner. We just haven't seen each other in a while and the - the beard startled me."

Cisco rubbed his chin. "Guess I should have warned you," he said to Caitlin, and then added to the waiter, "I'm growing it out. You know how that goes."

"Really," Caitlin said. "Everything's fine. Can I get another water, please?"

Still looking suspiciously at Cisco, the waiter left. Cisco settled into the chair on the other side of the table. "Sorry about that," he said. "I forgot how I looked. It's been a hell of a - " he paused as if trying to pick the right word. "Day."

It hadn't been the beard, or at least, not totally. She lowered her voice, well aware that the other diners were still watching them out of the corners of their eyes. "What happened, and what do we need to do about it?"

He mimicked her tone, leaning forward to mutter, "Time travel. And we don't need to do anything. It's all done."

She gaped at him, then shut her mouth with a snap. "Go on."

He gave her a quick overview, but even that was enough to have her mouth hanging open again. "So this is you," she said, pushing the notebook over to him. "I thought it was a coincidence."

He bent his head down to study it. "Yeah," he sad. "I guess it must be. That's not half-bad. I told her she was a good artist."

"Kathleen?" she said. "My ancestor. You told her she was a good artist."

"Yeah, she was like, pshaw, but that's good work right there. You can see it." He skimmed the scholars' notes and his brows went up. "What." He pointed at the paper. "Are they for real with this?"  


"It's purely speculation. They had very little information about you. For obvious reasons."

"Yeah, no big, they were just about half a continent off on their indigenous groups." 

"We can go and correct them if you like."

He snorted. "Like they'd listen." He shut the booklet and handed it back, and she saw the linen bandages. 

"Oh, Cisco, your wrists! What happened?"

He pulled them back. "The chains they put on me in the prison weren't exactly padded," he said. "It's okay. Kathleen took care of them before I left."

"I believe you, but that was still two hundred years before germ theory became widely accepted." Her brain buzzed with horrifying visions of seventeenth-century bacteria infecting broken skin. She flagged their waiter down. "Excuse me? I think we're going to need those house specials to go."

* * *

Star Labs was deserted, only the automated monitoring system crooning to itself. Central City seemed to be dead quiet at this point in the afternoon. 

Caitlin did a full examination, cleaning and disinfecting not only the raw red marks around his wrists and ankles, but also the scratches and bruises. She permitted him to go take a shower, and he came back in clean clothes, with his hair freshly washed and his face baby-smooth. She winced at the yellowing bruise spread over his jaw but didn't say anything.

"Indoor plumbing," he said. "I love it so much."

"Antibiotic cream," she said, brandishing a tube. "And bandaging."

He stuck out his wrists, which definitely had the worst damage, and she tended to them. She looked up to see him staring at her with an unreadable expression. "What?"

"Nothing, you're just - you're a lot like her."

"Kathleen?" She tugged off her gloves and threw them away.

"Yeah." He turned his face away and reached for the the takeout container of chowder that he'd practically licked clean already. "This was really damn good. Did you get to eat yours?"

"Hmm?" She was thinking about what Kathleen had written about him.  


"Chowder. Dinner? Nutrition." 

"Oh." She checked her takeout container. "It's gone cold."

In the kitchen, she poured the soup out of the bread bowl into one of the mismatched bowls that lived in the cabinets. He ate the somewhat soggy bread bowl when she said she didn't want it. "The bread in 1672 prison was all stale and nasty," he said with his mouth full. "I know this has all kinds of preservatives and shit, but it's so _ good. _ "

"You know," Caitlin said meditatively, getting up as the microwave beeped, "it might be a reflection on our life. But the strangest part isn't how you time-traveled, it's that you don't seem to have changed anything."

They'd verified several things with each other while she'd checked him over. Their friends' names, details about each other's lives, world events - "Shit, Trump is  _ still _ president? I was hoping I'd fucked that up" - and everything seemed to match what Cisco had known before his jaunt to the past.

"Thing is," he said, chewing on a piece of crust, "opening a door to hell sounds exactly like a breach."

She blew gently on her spoonful of chowder and ate it. He was right. It really was very good. "Well, if you didn't know what you were looking at."

"Right, but I heard that story  _ before _ I went back. And I asked Kathleen to give her journal to Harvard. I don't know if she would have thought of it otherwise. She clearly thought I was a little cuckoo for asking. But that journal was why we were in Boston at all." 

"You're thinking your time travel was a closed loop?"

He nodded. "I was always in 1672, Kathleen always knew me. I just had to fulfill my end of the deal here in the future."

It was a different way of thinking about time travel. Another option, maybe. Hard to wrap her head around. 

Almost as hard as a whole different way of thinking about Killer Frost. Not a burden. Not a curse.

A birthright, passed down to her by generations of mothers, including Kathleen. 

She'd brought the diary reproduction with her to the kitchen, if only because she didn't  want to let go of it just yet. "Do you want to know what happened to her?" she asked.

Cisco stared at the book for several seconds. Then he shook his head.

"Are you sure?"

"Maybe someday," he said. "But - she's dead, Caitlin."

"Well," Caitlin said. "Yes."

"I mean, I know she's been dead for like three hundred years. But she was also alive a couple of hours ago." His face crunched. "Am I making sense?"

"You are," she said. "I understand."

He sighed. "Can you tell me one thing?"

"What do you want to know?"

"Was she happy?"

Caitlin ran her fingers over the smooth plastic cover, thinking of the facts that she'd heard in a brisk, matter-of-fact recital today. After her odd appearance in New York - "nobody is quite sure how or why she went from Massachusetts to New York," Professor Turnbull had said, "and Kathleen remained very close-mouthed about it" - she had settled in and done business as a midwife and herbalist. Remarried in 1675 to a Dutch-born apothecary named Lodewijk Tuinstra, she'd been her husband's business partner until she'd died in 1713, leaving her journal to a very puzzled Harvard University.

"I think she was," Caitlin said. "She sounds happy." A loving husband, a prosperous business, a healthy family.

"And clearly she had at least one kid," he laughed, waving his hand at her.

"Five, actually. One son, four daughters. They all survived to adulthood."

"That's awesome. Did the diary tell you about Johnny and Molly?"

She nodded. "That wasn't that unusual, you know. Infant and child mortality was much worse before modern vaccines and nutrition." In some parts of the world and in some socioeconomic classes, it was still pretty bad.

"Oh, sure, I know. You hear all about it. But I guess I always figured it wasn't - " He looked wretched. "It wasn't as bad. Somehow. For them."

Caitlin ate her chowder thoughtfully. Maybe she always had too. But Kathleen, though she loved Lodewijk and all her children very much, had still spoken tenderly of the children and the husband she'd lost, years later. 

Professor Turnbull had remarked on it, noting how modern it was to be this open in writing about personal sorrows and loss. Caitlin wondered if that had been Cisco's influence.

He rubbed his temples. "Hey, you got any aspirin?"

"Headache?" Caitlin asked.

"One's brewing. I thought these were done with. I was getting wicked headaches almost the whole time I was there. Not vibey ones either. I hit my head when I came through the breach." He touched the back of his head, looking pensive.

She'd checked his skull in her examination and hadn't found any lumps or soft spots that would cause concern. "Does it hurt in a specific spot?" Maybe they should do an MRI.

"Just crawling right up my forehead. Like someone put my head in a vice."

Caitlin studied his eyes. He was focusing just fine, he had eaten with plenty of appetite and no indication of nausea. His speech was clear, not slurred, and he didn't seem confused or out of it.

He went to the freezer and pulled out the can of coffee. "You want?"

"I'm all right," she said. He always made his coffee so strong it buzzed in her teeth. 

He peeled the lid off and stuck his face in, inhaling blissfully. "Mmmm. That's the stuff." He started scooping grounds into the coffee maker. 

"Ohhhhhh," she said quietly.

He looked at her. "What, oh?"

"You can have an aspirin if you need it," she said, fighting a smile. "And an MRI wouldn't be a terrible idea. But I think I know what caused your headaches."

"Really? What?" He clicked the coffeemaker closed and hit the button to start the brewing.

"Did you have any coffee the whole time you were there?" she asked. "Or any tea other than herbal?" She felt pretty sure of the answer. Coffee and tea had been imported luxury items in England at the time. The likelihood that they could be found in the house of a small-town widow in the colonies was slim to none.

"No," he said, and then comprehension dawned over his face. "Wait. Don't tell me."

"Caffeine withdrawal," she said, giggling.

He slapped his forehead. "Shit. You're right. I was even jonesing for some joe, and I never put it together. I just kept drinking her painkiller tea."

"Do you really think it suppressed your powers?"

"All I know is, my powers sputtered out while I was drinking that nonstop at her place, and then when we got locked up, we got bread and nasty-ass beer if we were lucky. And that was all made with grains from another source. It could have been something else, but Occam's Razor."

"We should go back and get some samples," she said. "Of the plant life and maybe some pieces of the rocks in that area."

"Uh, problem," Cisco said. "Standing in that meteorite field wonkified my powers and sent me back in time. If I'm carrying a piece while we breach home, who knows where we'll end up? I don't really want to star in Cisco and Caitlin versus the Mole Men, after the week I've had."

She flashed him a grin. "We don't have to take it back with us through a breach, through. Here in the 21st century, we have this wonderful thing called the post office."


	10. In Which Kathleen's Diary is a Comfort and an Aid to Her Descendent, Certain Admissions Are Made, and a Heretofore Purely Platonic Relationship Becomes Rather Less So

Caitlin sat on her couch, reading the diary for the third time in the past day. She wanted drink it in, Kathleen's calm, reassuring voice reaching out to her like a friendly hand. It almost drowned out her mother's dire warnings.

She'd automatically opened to the beginning of what scholars called "The Fanciful Section." A whole page was taken up with the words,  _ Being meant for the information of my daughters and granddaughters to come, and most particularly Mistress Katelyn Snoe _

Professor Turnbull had  _ loved _ that dedication. "This is her  _ legacy _ ," she'd said, waving her arms. "She's passing this wisdom to her female descendants and also reminding herself, by naming herself in the title."

"Why did she say Snow, though?" one of the scholars had asked. "At the time she wrote this, she'd been married to Lodewijk Tuinstra for eight years."

"She's calling back to an earlier self," Professor Turnbull had stated grandly. "Giving the advice she wishes she had gotten when she was younger, when she was still Kathleen Snow."

The variant spelling was attributed to the general creativity of spelling in 17th century writing, especially considering that Kathleen had gotten a second-grade education at best.

Still, Caitlin had sat with her heart beating fast and her ears ringing as she read the transcript, neatly typed, spelling corrected, asterisks scattered like snowflakes pointing at Professor Turnbull's footnotes.

Caitlin ignored those. Kathleen's words were the important ones.

_ I take up my pen in this year of our Lord 1682, to fulfill the promise that I made to the Traveler, these ten years past. I made this promise with all my heart at the time, but oh how foolish and faithless a woman I was! I convinced myself that there was no need for such strange revelations to be committed to paper, as they had never been for generations of my foremothers past.  _

_ I bore two healthy girls and rejoiced in their strength and the ease of my laboring with them and with their brother. Certainly I would be present to tell my daughter of the shadow sister she carried. Certainly I would live to see her wed herself, and great with child. Certainly I would one day dandle my little granddaughter on my knee, and tell her stories of the power that would soon awaken in her breast. The Traveler's conviction was baseless. The secret of our blood would travel straight and true from mother to daughter, some three hundred years and more, until it reached you, my descendant. _

_ In such way does God laugh at the plans of mortal men and women, and well He might, for He shall call me home at any instant that it pleases Him. _

_ As I lay abed laboring to bring forth my latest babe, I was convinced in my heart that this was that instant, that my Father in Heaven awaited me, and I should stand before Him and confess that I had made a promise and yet fulfilled it not. In this land, far from the place of my birth, far from the aunts and grandmother and sisters who would speak of the Frost if I could not, the secret should stop with me. And thus it should be my fault, and mine alone, that you, my darling girl, met your Frost with fear and not joy, that she stood athwart you and not alongside. _

_ My God and Father saw fit to carry me through this harrowing labor, and to furthermore bid my little babe live, and for that I thanked Him on my knees as soon as I was able to rise from my bed. I write this now with this same little babe suckling at my breast, a fine and healthy child of some three months, with the brightest eyes I ever did see in an infant of such tender age.  _

_ I know not which of my daughters is the root that you will blossom from, sweet one, but I shall tell you what my own mother told me as the Frost rose up in me. _

_ She is your birthright, your sister, and she shall ever be your most faithful companion. All may desert you, all may go before you to the Father, but the Frost will be by your side. If you cringe from her, if you despise her, she will become a scourge upon you and a terror to those you love. But if you do greet her with hand outstretched, with love in your heart for her and for yourself, she will be your devoted protectress and companion. And if you do cast her out, if you silence her voice within you, I can attest to you myself that you shall always feel empty, that you shall always seek her though you know not what you seek. _

Caitlin found that she was crying again.

"Male scholars have dismissed this as the wild imagination of a woman who spent a long time alone," Professor Turnbull had said, glasses askew and frizzy hair trembling with her excitement. "But I believe that this is a very early example of a truly American, truly feminine speculative fiction. In her character of the frost monster that lives with in her, she's exploring an extensive metaphor for feminine rage and sorrow, emotions that were shut down, frozen out, even. Kathleen has made her peace with them and wants to share that peace with her daughters."

Caitlin had sat in the lecture, tears dripping from her chin to the page in front of her, wondering what Professor Turnbull and all these skeptical academics would do if she stood and said, "No, this is the literal truth. Kathleen Hewitt/Snow/Tuinstra had a metahuman sister with cryogenic powers who shared her body, and a line of daughters down to me have had one, too."

_ Why _ hadn't her mom ever told her?

Maybe it had skipped generations. She thought of her grandmother, who had died when she was five. Margaret Tannhauser always seemed to be in a daze, absently patting her head and mumbling, "pretty," when Caitlin was presented to her at each visit, as if she'd never seen her before. Schizophrenia, her mom had told her years later. She had taken powerful antipsychotics every day. 

Caitlin had conscientiously marked "mental illness" in every family history section of every medical form she'd ever filled out. Last year, the idea of schizophrenia had haunted her until she'd revealed her powers to Cisco. His reaction had reassured her that as terrifying as they might be, they were at least real and not hallucinations or delusions.

Now she wondered if schizophrenia had been the mistaken diagnosis for Killer Frost.

Kathleen had written more, details of how Frost worked, of how it felt to be inside her while Frost had control, of how they spoke to each other and influenced each other. And there was more, in a slightly different hand, with a more old-fashioned speech, of things that Frost could do with cold and ice and snow. She wrapped that up with,  _ I know that thou art as clever as thou art cold, for I am such as well. There will always be a new way to use these powers that God hath blest us with, and thou wilt find them most eagerly. But last and most important of all, my Frost-child, never forget that thou art stronger together with thy warm sister. Thou art the power but she be the heart.  _

Last of all, in Kathleen's hand:  _ Go with God, both of you, with all our love. _

Caitlin rested the diary on her knee, looking at nothing. She wished she'd gotten this earlier. Before Killer Frost first emerged, before she'd spent a long horrible year fighting her and losing, before Frost had fought back, locked her away and allied with Savitar. Before Caitlin had gone to Amunet Black for what had ultimately turned out to be a Dumbo's feather of a solution, and before she'd endured her and then come to value her. 

And lose her again.

She wiped her eyes.

Kathleen's Frost had returned to her after years asleep. Maybe Caitlin's would too. And maybe this time, she would be ready to welcome her back.

She turned back to the page with the sketch of Cisco on it. The label read,  _ The Traveler, who changed the course of my life, who is gone, never to be seen again. God be with him in his journey, and God willing we shall greet each other in the hereafter. _

It was dated 1674, two years after he'd spent less than a week with her. There had been a lot of speculation at the lecture about their relationship, about the way she'd written about him, about what effect he'd had in her decision to leave Massachusetts. One theory was that they'd run away together, but some mischance had befallen him on the road, or right after they got to New York, leaving her on her own again. Another was that he'd seduced her, and then dumped her when he got tired of her.

Kathleen hadn't said.

And of course, Cisco hadn't said either. 

He'd told his story to Barry and Iris that morning, greeted by the appropriate gasps of shock and amazement. After that, he'd been quiet and thoughtful the rest of the day, almost unnaturally so. When they'd been working in the same room, she'd caught him looking at her a lot, but she hadn't been able to read his expression.

She'd whispered to the others to give him time, that he was still adjusting to life back in the twenty-first century, and they actually had. She didn't know if that was it, or if he'd been thinking about Kathleen. 

Caitlin chewed her lip and reached for her phone. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, typing in and erasing rough draft after rough draft. There was just no perfect way to say this. 

_ Were you intimate with my ancestor _ , felt too euphemistic.  _ Did you have sex with my many-times great-grandmother? _ far too blunt.  _ What was the nature of your relationship with the Widow Snow _ sounded like a damn court deposition.

Finally, she typed,  _ Did you sleep with Kathleen?  _ and hit send before she could second guess herself again.

When he didn't answer right away, she put the phone on the coffee table and tried to keep reading. But she kept looking at the phone, waiting for a reply, second-guessing her own motives in asking, wishing she could recall the text. Phones could practically control the International Space Station and they still didn't come with a recall text function?

She'd just given in and grabbed up her phone to type,  _ Never mind, I shouldn't have asked, please forget about it, _ when her phone buzzed in her hand.

She squeaked and dropped it in her lap. It sat innocently. She picked it up and read the answering text _. Can I come over? _

She worried her bottom lip and typed, _ Yes, _ before she could talk herself out of it.

A moment later, a breach opened up in her foyer and Cisco jumped through. "Hi," he said, while the breach sucked itself closed.

"Hi," she said.

"Sorry I didn't answer right away. I was in the shower. Again." He shook his head. "Right now, I'm just like - indoor plumbing, man. Indoor plumbing!"

"I really can't blame you," she said. His hair was shiny and damp and looked as if he'd spent some time and a good amount of product on it. 

"Can I - ?" He gestured at his usual squashy armchair, which sat kitty-corner from her end of the couch.

"Of course!"

He sat, and then leaned forward to look at her, elbows braced on his knees. "No," he said.

"What?"

"No, I didn't sleep with Kathleen."

She blushed hotly. "Okay," she said. "That's - well, I shouldn't have asked, and I'm sorry that I did, because it's your business. But thank you for answering."

"In the interest of transparency," he continued, "I should let you know we did make out."

Her stomach, which had begun to unknot itself, twisted up again. "To what extent? If you want to to tell me."

"Mmm. PG-13."

"Okay," she said, ordering herself to stop there. Even if they had gone all the way to NC-17, it wasn't her business, even if Kathleen was her ancestor and Cisco was her friend. She especially didn't have any business feeling . . . well.

Feeling _ jealous. _

He gave her a crooked grin. "Were you worried that I was your great-great-and-change-grandpa?"

"Hermione Tuinstra, later Vandermeer, was born in August of 1682," she said dryly. "Even if I was worried about that for a split second, I remembered basic biology."

He made a face. "Yeah, okay, Dr. Snow." He blinked. "Wait. She named her baby  _ Hermione? _ "

"It was a name back then," Caitlin said. "It was in  _ The Winter's Tale. _ "

"Yeah," he laughed, "but it's also in Harry Potter, and I told her about Harry Potter, and Hermione was her favorite character."

"Wait, she was?" Caitlin touched the diary. Hermione was her favorite character, too. 

"Yeah, and it was the weirdest thing. She was all like, mhm, mhm, wizards and magic, right there with ya. But a girl going to school? Hold the phone!"

"It would have been a really outlandish concept in those days."

"Yep. She made me tell her everything about how girls went to school and got to be scientists and doctors and whatever they wanted. It blew her mind. It totally blew her mind."

"Not every girl. Not everywhere. You know that," she said.

"More than in those days, and in that place," he said. "Wow. Hermione." He tilted his head. "Your grandma times . . . how much?"

"Thirteen," she said.

His mouth fell open. "Thirteen? Thirteen generations."

"Fourteen including her."

"I way underestimated that. Fourteen? It sounds like it should be caveman days." He reached over for the candy bowl she kept on the side table.

She smiled a little. "Cisco?"

"Mm," he said, sorting through the candy bowl for whatever his sweet tooth wanted at the moment.

"What was she like?"

He found a butterscotch candy and put the bowl back. "Kathleen?" he asked, unwrapping the candy and tossing it in his mouth.

She nodded, watching him. 

"She was . . . sweet. But tough. Um." He fiddled with the wrapper. "Practical. But not boring. Practical like . . . she didn't focus too much on unimportant shit. She knew something was hinky with me from the jump. The clothes and the way I talked and you know. All the stuff. But I was hurt and I needed help so she helped." He grinned suddenly. "But when she decided it was time for answers, believe me, I started talking."

Caitlin smiled. "What else?"

"She was smart as hell. And curious about the weirdest things. She always wanted to hear stories from our time. I told her about Harry Potter and Star Wars and she was so into them." 

"You told her about Star Wars."

He rolled his eyes at her. "I know. I know. But I didn't give her details she wouldn't understand, like the Kessel Run thing."

"Cisco," Caitlin said. " _ Nobody _ understands the Kessel Run thing. That's because it doesn't make sense."

"If you would watch  _ Solo  _ with me - "

She sniffed. "Tortured retconning."

"Anyway, I think she heard ships and thought it was about sailing. But she liked the story." He smiled to himself.

Caitlin looked at that soft smile and felt something wither a little bit inside her chest. "What else?"

"Um. Well, she was really religious, like she prayed and talked about God a lot, but not in an obnoxious way. Just like, hey, he's up there and I'm down here and we're both doing our thing."

"What did she think of you being an atheist?"

"I didn't tell her."

"You didn't?"

He folded the wrapper a few times. "I didn't tell her about being atheist, or about being bi, or a lot of things that are way more acceptable these days than they were then."

"Did you think she'd be upset?"

"Honestly? I didn't know what her reaction would be and I kind of didn't want to risk it. I guess if we'd spent more time together, I would have told her, but we didn't."

She chewed her lip, the one question she hadn't even dared to formulate in her text now beating at her throat. 

_ Were you in love with Kathleen? _

She was jealous. Whether she had any right to be or not, she was jealous, because she was a nasty, selfish person and she wanted Cisco to smile like that when he talked about  _ her. _

"Anyway, like I said." He got up to throw away the candy wrapper. "A lot like you."

"That doesn't sound like me," she said.

He raised his brows at her. "Sweet, deceptively strong? Lots of ice?"

She blushed and looked away. Sometimes when he said things like that, she thought -

Well. Never mind what she thought. This wasn't the time.

"How are you doing?"

"Me?" she said, toying with the cording on the edge of her armrest. Was it starting to fray? How old was this couch anyway? "Fine."

"Hey," he said, reaching out and tapping the back of her hand.  "It's me. None of that fine stuff. You just found out where Killer Frost came from. That's huge. That's an answer you've been lacking for years now."

She stared at him a moment, hearing the question he wasn't asking. "What if it's an answer I got too late?"

"She came back to Kathleen."

"This is different."

"How?"

"Kathleen's Frost was blocked by natural power dampeners. I still don't know what DeVoe did to take my Frost away, or put her to sleep, or whatever it was he did. How can I get her back until I know that?"

"You will," he said.

"Or what if - ?"

"What?"

"What if whatever DeVoe did, it really was temporary, but she's staying away. She knew I didn't want her and she decided not to come back."

He let out a sigh. "She could have run away. Because you'd do that, and she's your sister."

Caitlin looked down at her knees. Her own tendency to shut down or hide away wasn't something she was  _ proud _ of, even when she recognized that it was what she needed. 

"But you know what else you've always done?"

She lifted her eyes.

"You come back. Whenever we needed you, you came back, even when it was hard." He smiled at her. "You want her back, so she'll be back. Someday."

She let that settle over her heart like a warm blanket. "I hope you're right."

"I'm right," he said.

She snorted and unfolded herself from the couch. "Do you want anything? Coffee?"

"I've drunk so much coffee today," he said. "And I got take-out from, like, three different continents."

"Cisco! Didn't I tell you to take it easy?" Broad-spectrum antibiotics, like the round she'd given him just for safety's sake, often disrupted the gastrointestinal system. "You should be having things like toast and rice - "

"I had rice! Underneath my sweet and sour pork." He shrugged. "My stomach's a little oogy, but I took something for that."

She rolled her eyes and poured herself a glass of water. "How are you adjusting otherwise?"

He was silent long enough that she turned to look at him. He gave her a little smile. "Would you believe me if I said fine?"

"No," she said, coming back to the couch and curling up again.

He sighed. "I was in the drugstore to get some Tums," he said. "And I stopped in the condom aisle. I just stood there looking at all of those birth control options and thinking about that poor dumb kid Martha. How everything would have been different if she'd gotten pregnant today. It might not have even happened."

Caitlin thought of pointing out that grown men still preyed on innocent girls. That girls and women faced with unwanted pregnancy still did drastic things. That people still hid behind the veil of piety when what they really wanted was to keep women under their thumb. 

But she knew what he meant.

He slouched in his chair. "You know, all day today, I'd just randomly think how crazy this whole world would look to Kathleen. Electricity and women with the vote and same-sex marriage and microwaves and cell phones. She'd keep finding something new every time she turned around."

"It's a very different world," she contributed. "But I think she'd recognize some things."

"Bigotry," he said. "Hatred. Abuse of power."

"Friendship," she said. "Faith. Love."

He rolled his head on the back of the chair and smiled at her. "Yeah. I guess some good things stuck around."

She smiled back. 

With a grunt, he heaved himself out of the chair. "I think I need to listen to sad songs in Spanish and drink tequila, or something," he said. 

"No tequila," she said. "Not on what I gave you."

"Okay! No tequila. Hot chocolate that I'll pretend is tequila. See you tomorrow?"

"Of course," she said. 

Should she ask him?

If she didn't, she'd never know.

It might be better not knowing, though.

He put out his hand to breach back home, and she took a quick breath.  _ Ask him. Ask him now. What were you feelings for Kathleen? You'll hate yourself if you never find out. _

But before she could get out more than his name - "Cisco?" - he dropped his hand. 

"Okay," he said, turning. "So, you know what? That was a nice place.”

She stared at him, thrown entirely off-kilter. “Where?”

“The restaurant. The chowder place.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, it had good reviews on Yelp, so.”

“Yeah. Looked like it. Looked like a good place for a date. So we should do that when we go back to get samples.”

“Do . . . “

“Go there on a date. Us." He flashed her a grin. "What do you think?”

A date.

Us.

Was she really hearing this?

When she didn’t answer for a good thirty seconds, his bright expression faded. “Or we don’t have to. I was just throwing that out there.”

The thing was, she wanted to say yes. She wanted to smile and accept this good thing that was landing in her lap. But her life wasn’t like that; good things just didn't happen to her, or at least not for very long. The last few years had taught her to look for the catch.

So she said, “Do you want to go on a date with me, or with someone who reminds you of Kathleen?”

His brow furrowed. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"The way you talk about her," she said. "I'm not blind. She sounds like a wonderful person, and you went through something very intense with her and that tends to create feelings. You're grieving right now, and - "

He put his hand over his eyes and muttered, "The irony, it goes clang."

"What did you say?"

He dropped his hand again. "I want to go on a date with  _ you _ ," he said clearly. "I'm not in love with Kathleen."

"Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure, yeah," he said. "Look. She was a really special person, and I did get to care about her a lot. You're not wrong, I am grieving for her. Maybe if things had been different, I might have fallen in love with her. But I didn't, because part of the reason I cared about her so much, so quickly, was because she reminded me of  _ you. _ "

She swallowed. "Well. That makes sense. We've been friends for years."

He eyed her. "Okay," he said. "Look. I wasn't going to tell you this for awhile. If ever," he added in a mutter.

"Tell me what?"

"The reason Kathleen and I only got a PG-13 rating was because I - um." He scratched his brow. "I kind of called her by your name."

She felt her eyes go wide. "You what?"

"Yeah. At a delicate time, you might say. She wasn't happy."

"I should think not!" She was briefly indignant on Kathleen's behalf, and then felt herself blushing, wondering exactly what had been transpiring when he'd slipped up. 

"Anyway, we had kind of a fight over it the next day and she told me that my feelings for you had been obvious the whole time. And I've been thinking about that ever since. We never talked about it again because, you know. Trial for witchcraft. But it's been on my mind."

Those looks. His quietness. She'd thought that had been heartbreak. Instead, he'd been trying to figure out what to do about his newfound feelings.

For  _ her. _

"So," he said. "If you want me to drop it forever, tell me, but - do you?"

"No," she said, jumping out of the couch and reaching out as if to keep him from leaving. "I mean yes. I want to go on a date with you. To that restaurant or anywhere you want."

His grin broke out like sunrise. "Anywhere?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "No dragon farms."

"Spoilsport." But he kept grinning at her. “Okay. Let’s do that. A date. A real one with no interruptions.”

“That may be too much to ask,” she said, thinking of the mayhem that had led to her missing her flight in the first place.

“We'll loop Iris in,” Cisco said. “She’ll run interference with Barry. He can do without us for one evening.”

She grinned. "Okay," she said. 

He grinned back and started to twist the knob, then stopped. “Wait. Forgot one more thing."

"What?"

He leaned toward her, his eyes asking a question. She answered it by leaning in and pressing her lips to his. She felt him smile, and he put his arm around her waist, deepening the first tentative touch. She clutched his shoulders, kissing him back. 

When they pulled apart, he was still smiling, and from the way her cheeks hurt, she thought she was too. "That was nice," he said softly

"Yes, it was."

He kissed her again, a quick, heady motion, and pulled away. "Okay," he said. "See you tomorrow?"

"See you tomorrow," she said. 

When the door shut between them, she pressed her fingertips to her lips and made a noise somewhere between a squeal and a giggle. 

That kiss - it boded well.

She drifted dreamily around her apartment for a few minutes, eventually dropping onto the couch and sighing up at the ceiling. After a few more minutes, she sat up and almost knocked the diary off the armrest. 

She rescued it and opened it one more time, to the first page. It was a reproduction of the very first page of the diary, with handwriting that belonged neither to Kathleen nor her Frost.

Instead, it was Emma Hewitt’s message to her daughter.

_ We do bid thee, go with God & fynd the happynes He hath in store. Signed this day the 4th of May 1664, thy loving mother, Emma, and thine own Aunt. _

It was also from Emma’s Frost, she thought, running her fingers over it.

She flipped to the back, where another note waited.  _ Our beloved mother and grandmother, Kathleen Tuinstra, bade us gift this to Harvard College upon her death. Though we know not why, she was most insistent that it was necessary for this journal to be preserved, for one day a woman of our line should have need of it. _

_ So to our daughters who will read this someday far from now - we love you, we are proud of you, and we are with you. Always. _

_ Signed this eighth day of February, 1714, Mistress Hermione Vandermeer and her Frost, as well as Miss Elizabeth Vandermeer, aged 12, whose Frost has lately risen up within her _

Caitlin traced her fingers over the thirteenth and twelfth generations of her grandmothers. For the first time in years, she felt as if the future looked bright.

FINIS

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's done y'all! I so enjoyed this little story that grew tentacles. Thank you to those of you who enjoyed it too. Including as always Hedgi who kept bugging me for more every time I wanted to squee about an idea or a bit of research I found for this.


End file.
